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COEffilGIir OEBOSffi 



VOCATIONAL SERIES 



THE MINISTRY 



VOCATIONAL SERIES 

THE TEACHER By Francis B. Pearson 

THE ENGINEER By John Hays Hammond 

THE NEWSPAPERMAN By Talcott Williams 
THE MINISTRY By Charles Lewis SUttery 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



VOCATIONAL SERIES 



THE MINISTRY 



BY 

CHARLES LEWIS SLATTERY, D.D. 

RECTOR OF GRACE CHURCH IN NEW YORK 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1921 






Copyright, 1921. bt 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published October, 1921 



^CIA630230 



PRINTED AT 

THE SCRIBNER PRESS 

NEW YORK, U. S. A. 

NOV 12 1921 



TO THE SACRED MEMORY OF 

E. M. S. 

WHOSE WISDOM, SACRIFICE, AND LOVE 

ENRICHED THE MINISTRIES OF 

A HUSBAND AND A SON 



PREFACE 

This book has been written not only for 
men seeking to know their vocation, but 
also for men who have definitely decided 
to enter the ministry. Some men will be 
patient and, in its printed order, read the 
book through. Others may care to use it 
to answer this question or that. I hope 
that the table of conl:ents will lead them to 
the answers which they seek. 

Obviously no handbook such as this may 
be counted a sufficient guide. Biography 
will give color to dry details; and varied 
biographies of the ministry abound. Two 
books especially I suggest as vivid, con- 
crete illustrations of the life of the ministry. 
One of them chances to be a book which I 
had the privilege of writing — the ''Life of 
Edward Lincoln Atkinson."* The book is 

* Published by Longmans, Green, & Co., London and 
New York. 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

so truly Atkinson's that I have no qualms 
in drawing attention to the happy expe- 
rience of his brief ministry; for it will tell a 
young man what he may expect at the be- 
ginning. The other book is John Watson's 
''Cure of Souls."* Here the reader will 
find the rich experience of an older man. 

V^. l^m O* 

Grace Church Rectory 

New York 

28 July 1921 

♦ Published by Dodd, Mead, & Co., New York. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAOB 

I. The Call of Every Man . . i 

II. What the Ministry Is . . . 8 

III. The Essentials of a Call to 

THE Ministry 17 

IV. Types Useful for the Ministry 31 

I. THE GENTLEMAN .... 3I 
II. THE MAN WITH A SENSE OF 

HUMOR 34 

III. THE MAN WITH A STRONG 

BODY 38 

IV. THE MAN WITH IMAGINATION 4I 
V. THE SCHOLAR .... 44 

VI. THE PRACTICAL MAN. . . 48 

VII. THE REFORMER .... 50 

VIII. THE MYSTIC 57 

IX. THE COMPOSITE TYPE . . 6I 

V. The Preparation 65 

I. IN SCHOOL 65 

II. IN COLLEGE 70 

III. THE CHOICE OF A THEOLOG- 
ICAL SCHOOL .... 82 
ix 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE ' 

IV. IN A THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL 87 

V. IN ALL EXPERIENCE . . . I06 

VI. The Specific Opportunity . . 112 

I. PREACHER AND PASTOR . . II 3 

II. A TEACHER OF THEOLOGY . 1 24 

III. A MASTER IN A CHURCH 

SCHOOL FOR BOYS . . 1 29 

IV. AN EXPERT IN SOCIAL AME- 

LIORATION 131 

V. AN ADMINISTRATOR . . . 1 35 

VI. HOW TO FIND ONE's PLACE . 1 38 

VII. The Necessity of the Ministry 139 

I. IN THE COMMUNITY . . . 1 43 

II. IN THE NATION . . . . I5I 

III. IN WORLD RELATIONSHIPS . 1 54 



VIII. The Compensations of the 

Ministry 

I. enough to live upon . 
II. the joy of adventure 

III. THE love of humanity 

A. IN THE COUNTRY . 

B. IN THE TOWN . 

C. IN THE CITY 

D. IN THE MISSION FIELD 

IV. THE LOVE OF GOD . . 



160 
160 

165 
168 
169 
176 
182 
189 
197 



THE MINISTRY 
I 

THE CALL OF EVERY MAN 

It is a thrilling moment in the life of any 
boy when he decides what he shall do with 
his life as a whole. The normal time for 
such a decision is in tJhe years from fourteen 
to eighteen, when the wonder of the world 
is opening the eyes to mystery, responsi- 
bility, and God. The first choice may not 
be the permanent choice; but, if it is made 
with earnestness and sincerity, it becomes 
an element in the permanent purpose, so 
far as that permanent purpose reflects the 
best ideals of boyhood, untarnished by the 
policy and compromise of later manhood. 

If there has been no adequate response 
when the soul wakes up and asks for a task 
worthy of a lifetime, if the decision has 
been faced only to be postponed, then the 
man must, as soon as he can, fix upon a 

I 



2 THE MINISTRY 

vocation. Some grave crisis, such as an ill- 
ness, a startling opportunity, or a war, may 
arouse one from littleness to greatness. 
But most people recognize small distinc- 
tion between one day and another. Not 
on a mountain-top, but on a dusty plain, 
the decision must in many instances be 
made. When a man is more than eighteen 
years old and has not yet fastened upon a 
life work, he ought to be deeply concerned. 
It may require several years to see the in- 
evitable vocation meant for him, but he 
must not drift, waiting for the winds to 
blow him into port. He must study his 
ambitions, his capacities; most of all he 
must ask God to show him what to do. 
And when he sees the work meant for him 
he must do it, whatever his relatives and 
companions may say about it. 

Relatives and companions are not always 
safe counsellors. Fathers and mothers who 
are worldly often have unworldly children. 
Sometimes a boy at school, moved by the 
appeal of a hero like Doctor Grenfell, sees 
in a flash what possibilities are ready for 
him; he too might go to some far-off fron- 
tier and give friendship and skill to people 



THE CALL OF EVERY MAN 3 

in lonely need. The bank and the office 
look unattractive and cheap. A master in 
the school discovers his dream, encourages 
him, talks over details of preparation, fires 
his imagination with the happiness that 
such a life of wholly unselfish service offers 
one. The boy is sure of himself. Vacation 
days come. In a summer morning under 
the trees he opens the subject to his 
father: the boy's eyes shine. The garden 
is like another paradise, and God is walking 
there. If any father picks up this book I 
ask him to imagine what he would say to 
such a son, declaring such a vision. If he 
smiles patronizingly, explaining that the 
dream is very pretty, but is wholly unprac- 
tical; if he tries to dissuade his son from 
what in his heart he believes too great a 
sacrifice for a boy of his ; if he tells him how 
earnestly he wants him to stay in the great 
city and continue his own lucrative busi- 
ness; if the apparently loving tones take 
effect, and the boy slips down from the 
exalted plane where he has been living, and 
regretfully, pathetically accepts the com- 
monplace career which the so-called loving 
father pictures for him — then that father is 



4 THE MINISTRY 

worse than a murderer: he has stabbed the 
beautiful spirit of his son ; he has left a poor 
dragged-out being, who shall go on to dull 
prosperity, a failure in God's sight. I write 
with intense feeling, because I know the 
folly and irreverence with which some 
fathers have treated their boys' ideals. I 
should like to warn boys that they must 
even in boyhood remember the Master who 
said: ''He that loveth his father . . . more 
than me, is not worthy of me.*' Even a 
father's love may reach only the superficial 
in his boy's life; it is only a great and true 
love which may love the boy's immortal 
soul. A boy should rejoice in his father's 
care for him; but he should demand that 
his father love the very best that is in him. 
And then there are mothers. A mother 
is apt to have more courage than a father. 
Often she dedicates her child in the cradle 
to some difficult, heroic life. And she is 
apt to be readier for sacrifice. The way 
mothers let their boys go off to the war 
demonstrated what mothers are. But a 
mother is sometimes unduly modest about 
her son. She fears that though he is willing 
to do some hard work for men, he will not 



THE CALL OF EVERY MAN 5 

be adequate. She would gladly send him 
forth ; but she does not wish him to be com- 
mon, mediocre, perhaps a failure. She 
thinks of a man who essayed just such a 
life — and behold him now, frayed, discour- 
aged, forlorn ! No: she says, so far as she 
can see, there is no material in the life of 
herself or her husband to assure her that 
their son would have the requisite metal for 
such testing. He had better do something 
prosaic and easy — something in which she 
thinks he could be sure of success. She is 
afraid to take risks. She uses what influ- 
ence she has to dissuade him. Her love is 
so great that her influence is decisive. The 
boy turns away from his dream, utterly 
discouraged. He must be prosperous, and 
just like the multitude. His dear mother 
loves him, but not enough. It is hard to 
tell a boy that there is anything higher than 
a mother's love; but there is. If God 
speaks to his heart and tells him that there 
is a life to be lived, he must reach out for 
that life, and hope to win his mother's sym- 
pathy for it as he enters its peril. 

Then there are companions. Most boys 
like to do things together. The leaders are 



6 THE MINISTRY 

few, and the crowds who follow them are 
innumerable. If this is true of mature men, 
it is superlatively true of boys. It is em- 
barrassing to think that your cronies will 
draw their heads together and speak merry 
words about your starting to prepare your- 
self for some profession or occupation which 
they think a presumption of piety or conceit. 
A right-minded boy will not wish to pub- 
lish his decision. It is a sacred hope which 
he wishes to tell only to one or two older 
persons at most. Only a prig would court 
publicity. But he imagines that the fellows 
of his own age must some way suspect him 
of setting himself up to be different, if not 
better. Any one who is going to make the 
important decision must be willing to stand 
alone if need be, to cast off all thought of 
what others will think. Independence and 
loyalty require a boy to say to himself that 
so high a choice as the choice of one's voca- 
tion must be beyond and above all con- 
sideration of that public opinion which a 
boy most dreads — the adverse judgment of 
the boys with whom he plays or studies or 
works. He may incidentally comfort him- 
self with the conviction that they will ulti- 



THE CALL OF EVERY MAN 7 

mately respect only that companion who 
sees straight and does what is right accord- 
ing to his own conscience. But just now 
his one thought must be the frank deter- 
mination to make his choice according to 
the leadership of God alone. 



II 

WHAT THE MINISTRY IS 

This whole book attempts to explain the 
ministry. At this point it seems wise to 
put down in as few words as possible what 
the ministry is. The rest of the book, it is 
hoped, will fill in the details. 

I 

The ministry is, first of all, a profession 
which allows a man to spend his whole life 
in helping others. That is his business. 
The community supports him for that pur- 
pose. A man in business sometimes gives 
one night a week to a boys' club. As he 
becomes interested in the individual boys 
he goes to see them in their homes. Then 
he becomes interested in the parents. He 
sees conditions in American homes which 
need radical reform. He knows that only 
personal service can effect this reform. He 
wishes he could give three nights a week 

8 



WHAT THE MINISTRY IS 9 

and several days each week to the beguiling 
work for his boys. But he cannot. After 
all, he must give his chief attention to his 
business that his family may be supported, 
and that his colleagues in business may 
know that he is not shirking his share of 
the work. Inevitably he must look with 
envy upon the parson who is set free to 
spend all his time in doing just such work 
as his boys' club opens to him in vision. 

The best men long to serve. Every good 
man tries to do what he can for others. 
The ministry sets a man free to spend all 
his time in service. 

II 

You will instantly think of the doctor and 
the teacher. Their lives, too, are dedicated 
to doing unselfish good; and the world 
would be a forlorn place without them. 
All honor to them in their superb service ! 
But their work is essentially limited to the 
bodies and minds of men. It is quite true 
that many a doctor heals the sick soul of 
his patient, and many a teacher builds up 
the soul of his pupil, but that is not their 
necessary function. In so far as they be- 



lo THE MINISTRY 

stow these larger benefits, they are entering 
the special domain of the ministry. 

The ministry helps in any way it can: it 
teaches, it binds up wounds, it gives bread ; 
but its essential function is to help men in 
the highest and deepest places in their lives. 
When they are glad, the ministry tries to 
make them generous with their joy; when 
they are grief-stricken, the ministry tries to 
give them hope; when they have confessed 
awful sin, the ministry tries to open the 
door of their despair into genuine repen- 
tance and the assurance of God's forgive- 
ness. The very best part of the work of 
the ministry is hidden, because it is confi- 
dential. 

It is a great thing, when you have reached 
a high or a deep place in life, to know that 
there is a man in the community to whom 
you have a right to go. Your friend might 
be bored or shocked; your family might be 
incredulous or distressed. The parson, you 
discover, exists for this very purpose: he is 
to help men in the high and the deep places 
in life. He may fail. But he will try. 
And what you tell him, no one else in the 
world will be told. 



WHAT THE MINISTRY IS ii 

If it is a great thing when you are exalted 
or abased to know that there is such a 
would-be helper of mankind, think what it 
must be to be that man himself. Can you 
imagine how he must rejoice that men, 
whether many or few, count on him in the 
supreme moments of life? Do you think 
he envies any famous man his fame, any 
rich man his riches, any powerful man his 
power ? No ; there is no place in life which 
he would exchange for his own place. He is 
thrilled with the thought that he is expected 
to help men in the heights and the depths, 
and he reaches out with all his might not 
to disappoint them. 

This help is given in various ways. It 
is often given face to face. It is quite as 
often given by sermons, which are straight 
attempts to speak to a congregation as 
one would speak to an earnest friend who 
wished to reflect upon the secrets of a good 
life — begun, continued, and ended in God. 
Occasionally the help is given by an ofiicial 
act like a baptism or a marriage or a funeral 
into which the personality of the minister 
has been poured, because he himself has 
been deeply moved. His voice has uncon- 



12 THE MINISTRY 

sciously revealed how much he cares; and 
therefore men suspect how his Master cares. 
The help is also given in the Lord's Supper, 
or Holy Communion, when the people, 
obeying the command of Christ, come espe- 
cially near not only to one another but to 
Christ Himself, so that their lives are fused 
in Him and His life enters into them in the 
simplicity of a mutual loyalty and a loving 
faith. Really there is no end of the ways 
in which a man serves, once he takes the 
service of Christian ministrations as his one 
and only business in life. 

Ill 

The vocation of the ministry would be 

\^^^ hopelessly baffling if a man had to depend 

on his own strength. He is trained to look 

for and to find the help which his difficult 

task involves. 

A 

He finds this help in two ways. The 
first way is through others. In the begin- 
ning, a man depends a good deal upon 
other people's experience. Men who teach 
him face to face or through the printed page 



WHAT THE MINISTRY IS 13 

tell him the experience which has come to 
them. Their honesty and clear sight he 
cannot doubt. He trusts them. He often 
gives his parishioners solid assurance; giv- 
ing it, indeed, with gleaming eye and firm 
voice, because he knows good men whose 
word he can and does absolutely trust. He 
has entered into their experience and appro- 
priated it; and it is, in a genuine sense, his 
possession. 

Little by little, as his ministry grows, he 
learns immediately what life at its highest 
and deepest is. He sees it in the faces of 
his sorrowing or triumphant parishioners. 
'*The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies 
plain.'' He knows certain facts of life, 
hitherto hidden from all eyes, as surely as 
the scientist sees certain other facts of life 
through his powerful microscope. As he 
helps, he is helped. As he brings assurance, 
he receives assurance. Naturally shrink- 
ing from the delicacy of his mission, he is 
fortified by the constantly enlarging knowl- 
edge which his experience with men is 
giving him. As the years pass, he can 
say with increasing conviction, ''This I 
know." 



14 THE MINISTRY 

B 

The other way In which a minister finds 
help for his work is by a growing intimacy 
with God. A youth is rightly modest about 
his knowledge of God. He knows that if 
he is to assist men in the highest and deep- 
est places in life he must bring them through 
all human assurances to a spot where they 
will be alone with God. There, quite alone, 
they will receive the aid which only God 
can give. But men will ask hard questions 
about God; and the neophyte is frightened 
lest his knowledge of God be too dim, too 
inarticulate, to form a basis of introduc- 
tion. Now what can be said about this ? 

First, a man who goes into the ministry 
is expected to spend a good deal of time in 
prayer and in quiet reflection (which may 
be a deeper kind of prayer, because it is lis- 
tening to God). To act well in any voca- 
tion, a man must pray and think. One 
does not go into the difficulties of the minis- 
try fully equipped. The equipment is given 
day by day to the man who asks and then 
listens. There need be no fear. 

Secondly, public worship means more to 



WHAT THE MINISTRY IS 15 

the minister than to any one else in the 
church. In much of the service, he speaks 
in the presence of the people, for them and 
for himself, before God. Their silent and 
most real worship is joined to his. The fact 
that it is common worship makes it possible 
for each person in the church to come nearer 
to God than he could come if he were alone. 
The spiritual energy of the devotion and 
aspiration of all is, in some wonderful way, 
given to each one. But every man must 
make his own effort ; then the reinforcement 
is given. Public worship can be for the 
minister no perfunctory or formal act. It 
is fundamental. He goes out of church 
knowing that God is closer to him, more 
intimately his companion, more truly the 
source and end of all the help he would give 
to mankind. 

In the third place, a minister is helped, 
as the days pass, by appreciating that he 
is a member of Christ's glorified body. 
Christ is his Master, his Head. Not only 
is he responsible to his Leader, who is both 
human and divine; but this divine and 
human Leader is also responsible to him. 
The help which the minister is appointed 



i6 THE MINISTRY 

to give IS not isolated and sporadic; it is 
organized and continuous. One stands be- 
hind the ministry of the Church, who is 
using now this man, now that, to bring His 
unfaiUng strength to the children of His 
Father. The man who tries hardest in his 
own strength, at last, with all honest prep- 
aration, yields himself to be a medium 
through which the omnipotent Strength 
may pass into the life of the man whom 
the minister would help with the Greatest 
and the Best. Then he stands aside, as it 
were, and beholds the wonderful works of 
God. 

The ministry gives a man the most effec- 
tive and necessary service which one man 
can hope to give to another. And the man 
who undertakes it need not be afraid. He 
will himself steadily be given the help 
whereby he may be confident that he shall 
be able to give the surest help to others. 



Ill 

THE ESSENTIALS OF A CALL TO THE 
MINISTRY 

Let us now imagine that the boy or 
young man who reads this book is wonder- 
ing if he is not intended for the ministry of 
the Church. The first question such a per- 
son will ask is whether he believes he has a 
call to the ministry. 



Before defining what might constitute the 
signs of a call to the ministry, I must draw 
attention to the fact that it is no more 
essential for a clergyman to be called to the 
ministry than it is for a teacher to be called 
to teaching, or a lawyer to the law, or a 
merchant to the shop. 

As you look over the people of a com- 
munity there are certain men whom you in- 
stantly decide could have done no other 
work than the work they are doing. There 

17 



i8 THE MINISTRY 

is the family physician. He is so far essen- 
tial to the Hves within many houses, he is 
so bUthe in the presence of joy or of sUght 
ills, he is so firm and siire in the hour of 
great need, he is so absorbed in his profes- 
sion, that you could not for one moment 
imagine him anything but a doctor. You 
know that he has been called of God. Then 
there is the famous banker, known perhaps 
on two continents. You look deeply into 
his life. You see that long ago the mere 
desire to make money evaporated. He is 
interested in huge enterprises. He makes 
railroads and steamships possible. He is 
secretly caring for the unfortunate. He is 
sensitive to public panic, and often so stills 
feverish men that a national calamity is 
averted. He watches men who are honest 
in the moment of their danger, comes cheer- 
ily into their offices, tells them all that he 
has is behind them; and they are saved. 
He sees a bank about to fail, bringing into 
its crash widows and orphans; he puts his 
wealth into it, and there is no '*run on the 
bank''; all men trust it. It may seem a 
very worldly task to be a banker. But this 
man whom I have described you know God 



A CALL TO THE MINISTRY 19 

has called to be a banker; you could not 
imagine him anything else. I remember 
going into a cabinetmaker's shop years ago. 
I wished this man to make me some Chip- 
pendale chairs. He showed me a distin- 
guished old chair which he said he would 
copy. I said, ^^Will you copy it exactly"? 
His eyes flashed. '^I shall make better 
chairs," he cried; and then he showed me 
a certain line which I saw could be im- 
proved. Afterwards he broke part of a 
chair which he was just making to show me 
that it would break an5rwhere but in the 
strong joint, which his craft had fastened. 
That man, I knew, God had called to be a 
cabinetmaker; and to this day I look at 
those chairs with the reverence with which 
I look upon a beautiful picture or the sonnet 
of a master poet. 

In contrast with the men who are ob- 
viously called, there are the rank and file 
in every town, in every city, who have no 
sense of vocation. They are like dumb, 
driven cattle. They work because they 
must, or they do no work at all because 
they can eat the bread of idleness. No 
one likes to see a clergyman who, so far as 



20 THE MINISTRY 

one can determine, has no sense of voca- 
tion. Neither does one Hke to see any man, 
whatever his occupation, who is not sure 
that he has been called to do what he 
is doing. The responsibility to get God*s 
verdict on what you are meant to do is im- 
perative throughout the length and breadth 
of life. Do not comfort yourself with the 
thought that you can go into any work in 
life without a call, provided you have the 
least hope of being anything more than a 
nonentity. In whatever direction you turn, 
you must put yourself to the pains of know- 
ing the signs which will indicate to you that 
you have a call from God. 

II 

If you have, then, an inclination to con- 
sider the claims which the ministry has 
upon you, how shall you decide whether 
God has called you to it? For some men 
the heavens open, as they opened for St. 
Paul, and there is the light brighter than 
the light of the sun; everything is imme- 
diately clear. If you are called in such a 
manner you have nothing to do but obey. 
But most men are obliged to think out 



A CALL TO THE MINISTRY 21 

the problem in a dimmer, more gradual 
light. They may in the end be exactly as 
sure; for God's revelation is always to the 
man who desires to receive it. God will 
always open the door to the man who 
knocks. The experience of older men may 
show to youth some of the signs by which 
God might indicate a call to the ministry. 

In the first place, the superficial qualities 
of voice, presence, so-called gifts of oratory, 
may be put aside. They are only useful if 
more important things have been weighed. 
A man with a rich voice, imposing presence, 
facility in utterance, may easily be only a 
pompous seven-day wonder, whose words 
and life carry neither conviction nor help. 
On the other hand, a man with a defect in 
his speech, of insignificant presence, of no 
skill in marshalling words, may be the in- 
spiration of the Holy Spirit to all who hear 
his voice or look into his eyes, because he 
has certain qualities which the other man 
wholly lacks. Charles Lamb stuttered: I 
have often thought what a wonderful min- 
ister he would have been — not because he 
stuttered, but because he had qualities 
which would have made his parishioners 



22 THE MINISTRY 

first love him and then follow his virtues, 
without a thought about the manner of his 
utterance. I do not mean that the super- 
ficial qualities may not help or hinder; what 
I emphasize here is that they are not funda- 
mental. 

Further, young people often have the im- 
pression that only learned men ought to be 
in the ministry. A learned ministry is ex- 
ceedingly desirable; but most clergymen 
to-day could not qualify before adequate 
judges as learned men; and these men who 
are not in any sense learned, but who have 
other admirable qualities, are often among 
the most valuable officers the Christian 
Church has now, or has ever had. There 
are certain demands which the Church 
makes for education in the ministry; but 
these do not include such acquirements as 
would entitle a man to be called learned; 
nor do they make a barrier to any one who 
has only a very fair mental equipment. If 
a young man feels the call to active life 
rather than to the life of a student, the 
ministry may still be for him. Certain 
posts in the life of the Church require men 
of wide and deep knowledge. Other posts 



A CALL TO THE MINISTRY 23 

may be manned by men whose knowledge 
is only moderate, provided always that they 
have the fundamental qualities of which 
I shall presently speak. I am trying to 
sweep aside the qualities which are subor- 
dinate, that you may fix your attention on 
the two qualities which seem to me of ele- 
mentary importance. 



The former of these two fundamental 
tests is so obvious that it seems superfluous 
to mention it. It is encouraging that we 
may believe that young men seeking the 
ministry in our time take it for granted. 
Nevertheless it must be put down as the 
primary qualification for the ministry. It 
is this: Are you determined to lead a good 
and honorable life? You will say that this 
is the question which belongs to every 
Christian man upon the threshold of his 
Christian responsibility. And you are quite 
right. No layman may point the finger to 
the black deed of a clergyman and grant 
himself as a layman the privilege of doing 
the same black deed without blame. Both 
are equally bad in the sight of God. Only, 



24 THE MINISTRY 

when a clergyman goes wrong, he carries 
with him the people who have trusted him 
as a leader and guide. They are more than 
simply shocked or scandalized ; the props of 
life are suddenly knocked from under them. 
They feel that no one can be trusted. Their 
faith has been cruelly mocked. On the 
other hand, the transparent goodness of a 
clergyman has kept many a man in his 
town on the right track. When I say good- 
ness I mean not simply innocence (though 
I do mean that) but unselfishness, kindness, 
quickness to speak up for the unpopular 
right, forgiveness of injury, patience, de- 
tachment from the things of the world, 
evenness of judgment. 

Lest the suggestion of such a catalogue 
of virtues as this seem overwhelming, it 
must be pointed out that these virtues are 
put before one as a goal. One desires them, 
one will honestly strive for them. We 
generally attain in life what we honestly 
strive for. If a young man, looking at the 
ministry, really wants to lead the finest and 
truest life he can discover, then he has ful- 
filled the first of the qualifications for the 
ministry. 



A CALL TO THE MINISTRY 25 

There are one or two details connected 
with such a principle which must be frankly 
examined. A man may hold back from the 
ministry because of an egregious sin in the 
past. If he be truly penitent, a man who 
has known the depths is sometimes turned 
into the best of saints. The youth of 
Augustine of Hippo was, the world would 
say, hopeless. Yet, by the grace of God, 
Augustine became one of the saints of all 
time. He never condoned his past; but it 
did not prevent his entrance into the minis- 
try. The man who has never fallen into a 
disastrous sin is occasionally so complacent 
that he is a veritable Pharisee, blind to all 
the irritating faults which make him the 
contempt of his neighbors. It is not what 
a man has been, but what he means to be 
which is the serious question as he faces his 
choice. 

Another detail to be considered is that a 
boy is saved certain temptations if he de- 
termine early to go into the ministry. A 
great vocatiqn set before one is something 
like a man's engagement to a noble and 
beautiful woman; as a man engaged to 
marry one whom he honors supremely does 



26 THE MINISTRY 

all he can to make himself worthy, so a 
man, decided to enter the ministry, does 
all he can to make himself worthy of what 
he believes a supreme vocation. He keeps 
himself unspotted from the world. He has 
an inspiring and positive reason for keeping 
himself at his best. 

One more detail there Is to think of. 
Every one in his senses wishes to be of fine 
character. What would one not give to 
have one's face shine with the goodness 
which now and again shines in the face of 
the truly good man, the man of positive 
attainment in character! A rarely attrac- 
tive compulsion of the ministry is that day 
by day it urges a man on to be his best. 
Other men do not feel the same need per- 
haps of absolute probity; they may not feel 
that so much depends upon it. The minis- 
ter is always conscious of the necessity of 
being good, in the sense farthest from cant 
and smugness — really and deeply good. 
He is fortunate beyond other men that he 
has this stimulus. 

While we must remember this in all its 
strength, we must also be assured that the 
power of the ministry is not in ourselves. 



A CALL TO THE MINISTRY 27 

but in God. No preacher, for example, 
would dare to limit his message to his own 
attainment. It is what he longs to be, not 
what he is, of which a man thinks as he 
preaches. The shining example to which 
he beckons men is not even the best man 
he has ever known; but it is the absolutely 
perfect incarnate Son of God. 

B 

If the desire to be good is the first of the 
fundamental tests by which a man may 
discover his call to the ministry, the second 
is the genuine desire to help individual peo- 
ple. A man who enjoys preaching to a 
church full of people, but is bored by the 
individual members of the congregation, 
ought not to be in the ministry. A young 
man who was teaching school the first 
year after his graduation from college, left 
a friend with whom he was walking and 
crossed the street to speak to a man. Re- 
turning, he explained to his friend that the 
man to whom he spoke had a boy in his 
school; he wished to tell him how well his 
boy was doing, how satisfactory the boy 
was, etc. The friend smiled and said: 



28 THE MINISTRY 

"You ought to go into the ministry; that's 
the sort of thing ministers do/' He did go 
into the ministry, and became one of the 
very best ministers imaginable. His friend 
made a sagacious comment ; Interest in Indi- 
viduals, caring sufficiently to go out of one's 
way to help, thinking and doing what strikes 
most deeply for one man at a time, count- 
ing each man as he comes worthy of one's 
best efforts — all that is indication that one 
is called of God to go Into the ministry. 



I have mentioned two outstanding tests 
by which one may judge if one has been 
called of God to go into the ministry. I 
have not spoken of belief. I have not 
spoken of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. 
I have not forgotten the importance of 
belief. I have not forgotten the supreme 
importance of trust in our divine Master. 
It Is because I am sure that if a man does 
all he can to keep Christ's commandments 
(that Is, to be simply and truly good as 
Christ taught and lived) then he shall know 
the doctrine (as Christ promised); and fur- 
ther. If he goes about helping individuals 



A CALL TO THE MINISTRY 29 

(people in prison, ragged, hungry, sick), he 
shall find Christ (who said: '* Inasmuch as 
ye have done it to one of the least of these 
my brethren, ye have done it unto me"). 
And if a man tries to be as good as he can 
be and to help people as much as he can, 
then he will cry out to have his life filled 
with Christ, not only that Christ may give 
His perfection to absorb the man's imper- 
fection, but that Christ may speak through 
his lips, and act through his hands, to help 
people, one by one, just as He helped them 
in Galilee years upon years ago. The hid- 
den yet ever present Christ is the secret of 
all our enthusiasm as we seek the ministry 
of His Church. That we may test ourselves 
and know that our enthusiasm is not emo- 
tion merely, but is solid, and therefore 
acceptable to Him, we ask two questions: 
Do I want to follow Him — that is, do I want 
to be good as He was good? Do I want 
to serve with all my being those whom He 
calls His brothers, one by one, each according 
to his need? 

If you can answer these two questions 
with a frank and joyful Yes, I think that 
you will see the light brighter than the 



30 THE MINISTRY 

light of the sun. I think that the Lord 
Christ will speak to you, telling you that 
He needs you to preach His Gospel, in deed 
and in word, to all the people whom you 
can possibly reach. 



IV 

TYPES USEFUL FOR THE MINISTRY 

Certain types of men enter the ministry 
with such quaHties as conduce to its effec- 
tiveness. These types may not be essen- 
tial to what in the best sense we may call 
success. Men of quite different character- 
istics may be so strong and able that they 
can win without qualities which for ordinary 
men are indispensable. But for every man 
it is an advantage to partake in some degree 
at least of the qualities which in this chap- 
ter are set down. If a man can answer the 
demands set forth in the last chapter, he 
will find encouragement if he have these 
additional traits. 

I 

THE GENTLEMAN 

To be a gentleman is for one man ex- 
ceedingly easy, for another supremely diffi- 
cult. The fact that a man's ancestors have 

31 



32 THE MINISTRY 

been what in a technical sense are called 
gentlefolk does not necessarily assure his 
own gentility. The vulgar boors who are 
brutes to their wives, bores to their friends, 
and a scandal to the youth of the land, are 
quite apt to be what are called well-born. 
They have an innate selfishness and crude- 
ness which make them an abhorrence to all 
decent people. The thin veneer of good 
clothes and conventional manners make 
their cheap characters only the shabbier 
and more disgusting to the discreet ob- 
server. 

On the other hand out of the simplest 
environment have often come the most 
shining examples of the gentleman in suc- 
ceeding generations. The man who is al- 
ways gracious but not effusive, who is dig- 
nified but not prim, who sees everything 
but notices nothing which could embarrass, 
who avoids the words which wantonly open 
wounds, who, in a word, is invariably kind, 
and is able to show forth his kindness, is 
quite as likely to be born in a cottage as in 
a palace. The title of gentleman trans- 
cends all class boundaries. It is one of the 
great words of life. In the last analysis a 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 33 

gentleman, like a poet, is born — not made. 
And again, like a poet, the gentleman can- 
not be sure that his son will succeed to his 
genius. The poet's son has amazing oppor- 
tunities if he is inclined to write verse; the 
gentleman's son has also amazing oppor- 
tunities if he is inclined to practise the fine 
art of inherent kindness nobly expressed; 
but gentlemen in successive generations can 
be no more assumed than poets can be 
assumed. The gentlemen and the poets 
quite often appear in strange corners of 
humanity. They are born, not made. 

In every town, in every school, in every 
college, are the youth who stand out as 
gentlemen. They are the delight of all who 
know them. One relies on them in emer- 
gencies. If a willing hand is needed they 
are always ready to put aside their own 
convenience and do the deed which needs 
to be done. The old are touched by their 
invariable respect and remembrance; the 
young look up to them and follow in what- 
ever leadership they may possess. Even 
the dumb creatures like them. They are 
unselfish, considerate, tactful. In one word, 
they are kind; everything is rooted in their 



34 THE MINISTRY 

kindness. But kindness alone will not make 
a gentleman. A gentleman is a kind man 
who has both the intelligence and the skill 
to show forth his kindness. 

A youth who is growing up to be a gen- 
uine gentleman, or a man who is in the full 
power of his gentility, has an exceptional 
qualification for the ministry. He is a type 
which the ministry diligently seeks. He 
will, in his own life, make Christ winning 
and attractive. Men knowing him will the 
better understand our Master. 

II 

THE MAN WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR 

There have been men in the ministry 
with admirable records for service who had 
not a ray of humor. They were personally 
good, they cared for each person committed 
to them with unfailing loyalty, and they 
did all the details of their office punctually, 
accurately, feelingly. But they met all the 
irritations and inconveniences of life with 
an invariable seriousness. They worried 
when they might have laughed. There 
were alleviating conditions, humorous situa- 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 35 

tions, which they never so much as saw. 
They might have found relief in the queer 
incidents of the morning for the awful sor- 
row which they would have to face in the 
afternoon; they might have come to the 
problem before them with a readier solu- 
tion if they had accepted the variety of 
experience as God had given it to them. 
There are good men in the ministry without 
a sense of humor; but they are not as good 
as they would have been had they pos- 
sessed it. 

If a man has no sense of humor as a 
natural endowment, he would wisely not 
attempt to cultivate it. The man who is 
not funny but tries to be funny is very 
sad. He makes every one sorry for him. 
Simply to repeat the story which has made 
others laugh, and to repeat it because 
they laughed, is a melancholy performance. 
Humor may be accompanied by a relish for 
amusing tales, but it is in no way depen- 
dent upon it. Humor is a discoverer, and 
thereby an interpreter, of life. It sees what 
the average intelligence passes by, just as 
the artist sees sunlight playing upon the 
scene where other men see only a monot- 



36 THE MINISTRY 

onous landscape. It sees sorrow as well 
as joy; for pathos and tears are close to 
laughter. It breaks up the drab evenness 
of life, and catches the high lights as it 
finds immediately beside them the deep 
shadows. 

One of the most astute judges of char- 
acter in his time was James Greenleaf 
Croswell. I saw him once after he had 
witnessed a play by Bernard Shaw. He 
was disturbed by the play; he thought it 
vulgar. But he was still more disturbed 
by the audience. **They laughed," he said, 
'*at the wrong times. The really humor- 
ous passages they ignored in silence; and 
they roared with merriment when they 
should have wept.'' The son of a clergy- 
man, he was a great schoolmaster. His 
clean-cutting humor was an element in his 
success; it would have been an element in 
his success also had he followed his father 
in his vocation. 

A boy or a young man with a sense of 
humor sometimes fears that the ministry to 
which he is drawn cannot rightly be his, 
because he cannot always repress his mirth. 
He has always associated the ministry, 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 37 

for some strange reason, with perpetual 
solemnity; and he fears that he would dis- 
grace it and himself. What must be said 
with all possible emphasis is that if one has 
this natural gift of humor, one has a gift 
from God for the effectiveness of the minis- 
try. If it is pure and honorable in all its 
thoughts and words, a sense of humor not 
only saves a man from absurd awkward- 
ness, self-consciousness, and conceit, but it 
binds him to his friends in a deep human 
sympathy; and even the stranger, seeing the 
gleam in the eye, is moved to put confidence 
in the man who sees and understands, as 
in a flash, the variety of which life is made 
up. 

A word of warning may be added. A 
sense of humor may go astray; it may be- 
come bitter, sarcastic, cynical. A man who 
has allowed his humor to turn sour ought 
to think carefully whether he ought to go 
into the ministry. Charles Lamb and Dean 
Swift both had a sense of humor. Lamb's 
humor was wholesome, life-giving; Swift's 
was like a loathsome disease. Swift would 
have made a clever politician; he did not 
help the Christian ministry. If you find 



38 THE MINISTRY 

your humor slipping down into cutting per- 
sonalities, cruel flings against your victims, 
venom against the world generally, pull 
yourself up while there is time. You are 
in danger of turning one of God's precious 
gifts into that which will ruin not only your 
own happiness, but the happiness also of 
all your family, friends, and neighbors. 
Save for the ministry the gladness of an 
unspoiled sense of humor. 

Ill 

THE MAN WITH A STRONG BODY 

Mere physical strength may be absurd. 
To have protruding muscles may not fit a 
man for anything but the side-show of a 
circus. Physical strength which spells en- 
durance, peace of mind under strain, ability 
to work hard and long without breaking 
in any way is a wondrous achievement. 
Often athletes are overtrained, and though 
they win in youth astonishing victories on 
the field, they are not able to cope with the 
opportunities of later life. The ministry 
does not need or expect prodigious physical 
strength; it does ask for a well-hardened 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 39 

body, able to endure strenuous work and 
nervous strain. 

A good deal of a clergyman's work must 
be among the sick and the poor. If a p'ls- 
toral call means to the sick man, not only 
sympathy and prayer, but also an infusion 
of strength from the presence of a strong 
and loving man, that call has done good to 
both the soul and the body of the invalid. 
In the same way when conditions are hard 
in the home, and want is not far away, the 
call of the clergyman who does not so much 
suggest submission to what has been, as 
hope for the strength and prosperity which 
honest effort may bring in the future, is a 
call amply blessed through that clergyman's 
strong body. Our Saviour once said that 
He perceived that strength had gone out of 
Him. A good man who is physically strong 
and well is consciously or unconsciously 
giving his strength and health to those who 
are weak, discouraged, fainting. He may 
Uvell thank God that his spirit dwells in a 
sound body. 

All other things equal, the ministry of a 
man whose body is firm and reliable has an 
enormous advantage for Christian service in 



40 THE MINISTRY 

every department over his colleague whose 
body is frail and uncertain. The work in 
any parish, in country or in city, ought to 
be exacting, even if a man has not found or 
made it so. The problems of individuals, 
and the problems of a parish as a whole, 
demand the most energetic service a man 
has it in him to give. He must go in and 
out diligently among the houses, he must 
study, he must prepare sermons, he must 
be to some extent a man of business, he 
must do certain things with his own hands 
if others fail, he must do his share for the in- 
stitutions of the Church or the community, 
serving on committees, making plans for 
them, and doing many other tasks besides. 
It is a life of variety, and that variety 
lessens the strain of the amount of work he 
must do. Yet, if he live up to his oppor- 
tunity, the volume of work is great. His 
strong body is an asset for which he is as 
thankful on Sunday morning in church as 
he is on Wednesday evening at an impor- 
tant meeting for parochial business, or on 
Thursday afternoon when he climbs the hill 
to make pastoral calls. 

The impression that the clergy are anae- 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 41 

mic and wan is fairly dissipated in our day, 
for they are not; but the husky youth, 
earnestly willing to enter the ministry may 
not be aware how important is the body 
which God has given him, and which by 
exercise and fine living he has protected 
and developed. 

IV 

THE MAN WITH IMAGINATION 

A man in a shop has an appointed task 
which he does thoroughly. While he is do- 
ing his routine work, he is thinking how the 
instrument or part which he is making could 
be improved. He experiments; he dreams; 
he sees a way — and presently he has in- 
vented something new which all sensible 
men will desire to possess. He rises in a 
day out of the ranks and becomes a distin- 
guished man. He has imagination. 

The Church needs men of imagination. 
Ways good for the nineteenth century are 
not, of necessity, good for the twentieth. 
New needs demand new methods. The 
Church has always been a poet, a creator. 
Hospitals, schools, Gothic architecture, 



42 THE MINISTRY 

stately music, huge parish houses, all came 
out of the creative or inventive instinct of 
the Church. As the Church goes on living, 
it will find geniuses to express for it the 
solution of subtle problems. Imagination 
will do it. 

There are many earnest youths to-day 
who might come into the ministry of the 
Church, but they fear that their dissatisfac- 
tion with things as they are would make 
them unfit for work in the conserving 
organization of twenty centuries. They 
vaguely see a new course which might be 
worth trying; but the old men wouldn't 
like it — and they suspect that their imagina- 
tion had better be carried to some other 
vocation. 

The Church is not afraid of intelligent 
criticism ; the Church appeals for it to every 
honest critic who has any knowledge of 
what he is talking about. That means a 
critic who really cares, and is not simply 
captious, or, at heart, indifferent. Of whom 
could the Church more truly wish criticism 
than the devout young man who cares so 
much that he is deliberating whether he 
shall not devote his whole life to the minis- 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 43 

try of the Church ? It is not unHkely that 
the tyro's first attempt to substitute some- 
thing better than the old machinery will 
be fantastic, wholly unpractical. But his 
fourth or fifth attempt, patiently and trust- 
ingly waited for, may bring something com- 
parable to a new invention in the indus- 
trial world. The old Gospel of Jesus Christ 
may be brought home to the minds and 
consciences of men as it has not gripped 
men for generations. The man with imag- 
ination need not fear that he is not wanted. 
The real leaders of the Church are not timid 
about his failures ; they long for his ultimate 
success. 

To have imagination is to be alert. Op- 
portunities knock at the door of the Church 
every day. New groups of foreigners come 
to our shores ; they may be a menace to the 
nation if uncared for; the Church may tend 
them, cherish them, love them, make them 
noble Christian citizens. The industrial 
groups may think the Church a selfish, out- 
worn bigot ; the Church might do something 
to make these groups bow down with joy- 
ful adoration to the Master of the Church. 
A young man who is alert cannot stand at 
a church door on a busy week-day without 



44 THE MINISTRY 

wondering how he can bring the restless, 
hopeless faces into the joy and peace of 
Christ's Church. Young men are welcome 
to criticise every detail of the machinery of 
the Church, if only they will use the imagina- 
tion which, beginning at criticism, goes on, 
with vigor, to discover what they, with their 
courage and hope, can bring to bear upon 
the new times to make Christ more openly 
the acknowledged Lord of men. 

V 

THE SCHOLAR 

The boundaries of acquirement and tem- 
perament which hem in the life of a scholar 
are difficult to define. A man may know 
almost as many facts as one can read in an 
encyclopaedia and yet have so little concep- 
tion of their relationship and worth that he 
can be called only a pedant. No sane judge 
would ever think of calling him a scholar. 
On the other hand a man may have excel- 
lent technical judgment, he may be able to 
weigh and compare, and yet have so little 
knowledge of any department of learning 
that he too never can be counted a scholar. 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 45 

He is like a man who knows the technique 
of poetry, its metres, rhythm, value of sylla- 
bles, but has no poetical ideas to put into 
his accurate mould. i\s one fails to be a 
poet, so the other fails to be a scholar. 

A teacher in school or college is apt to 
discover a boy or man in his classes who 
has what the expert calls 'Hhe making of 
a scholar." This pupil may show unusual 
care in the translation of Homer or Cicero; 
he may demonstrate a scrupulous exact- 
ness, and be aware of the subtle undertones 
which the mere literalist never seeks to in- 
terpret. Or the pupil may show an appre- 
ciation of the relative value of the events of 
some period of history. He seems to have 
an instinctive selective sense by which the 
chief events stand out in his mind, and the 
unimportant or less important dates and 
names cluster about them. The older man 
exults in a pupil who recognizes shades of 
meaning, who qualifies his statements, who 
can see both sides in an argument, who is 
fair-minded, not opinionated, who, in short, 
is by way of becoming a scholar. 

As youth deepens into manhood such a 
hopeful pupil may yearn to know the an- 



46 THE MINISTRY 

swer to some of the deeper mysteries of life. 
He feels the pull of God's loving power, he 
reads of God's revelation of Himself in 
former generations, he hears sermons, lec- 
tures, the conversation of his elders. He 
would like to weigh these matters. He 
would, he believes, like to give himself to 
the life of a scholar in the Church. 

Possibly the energetic friend may hesitate 
to encourage such a youth to come into the 
ministry, fearing that he will be too much 
absorbed in books', too little interested in 
people. Now let us say candidly that the 
man who tends to be a scholar is urgently 
needed in the Church of our day. I shall 
show later how gravely he is needed in the 
teaching force of theological schools;* the- 
ology needs men who have been technically 
trained as scholars from their youth up; out 
of the depth of sound knowledge and ex- 
perience they are needed to teach men face 
to face, and by accurate, large-minded books 
to teach those in far-off studies who will 
read their words. This, however, is not the 
only function of scholars in the Church. 
The parochial and administrative ministry 

*See below, page 124. 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 47 

needs men who weigh their words. That 
sort of eloquence which is simply fluent 
and easy to listen to is less and less accepta- 
ble. The man who shouts that his petty 
topic (whatever it may be) is the most im- 
portant that has engaged men's thought for 
two hundred years does not inspire confi- 
dence. Men are glad to have eloquence 
when it may be found, but they wish to 
have it harnessed to accuracy and good 
judgment. The scholar, or the man with 
a scholarly mind, may do great things for 
the Church, even though he spend all his 
days in what is called the practical work of 
the ministry. He may tone up the utter- 
ance of the practical part of the Church, 
making men respect not only its preaching 
but its business administration as well. We 
sometimes forget that business men, even if 
they have not been collegians, are educated 
men, because by long training they have be- 
come extremely careful not only in the deeds 
of their business but in its expression; they 
are, as it were, scholars in business. The 
practical ministry must not allow itself to 
be outdone by the carefulness of the com- 
mercial world. The Church is unfortunate 



48 THE MINISTRY 

if those who Instruct or govern it must con- 
tinually be explaining that such and such 
words were not meant at their face value or 
that other words must be entirely forgotten 
and forgiven. 

If any one who reads this book is keen to 
be a scholar in the Church, may these pages 
convince him that he will find adequate 
scope for all his inclinations, and be thereby 
a profitable servant in the Christian minis- 
try of our day. 

VI 

THE PRACTICAL MAN 

Another type of man useful in the minis- 
try is the practical man. He feels himself 
little apt to be a preacher; certainly, he 
says that he has no chance of becoming a 
scholar; perhaps he is quite sure that he 
never could be a large administrator. His 
gifts, if he may call them gifts, are prosaic. 
His eyes are wide open to details. He 
notices that a small boy's shoes are hope- 
lessly worn out; he visits the mother and 
discovers that, though she makes every 
effort to conceal it, poverty is pinching the 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 49 

little family. He then finds a way to help 
not only the boy but all others under that 
roof, without wounding self-respect and 
without delay. He notices that the carpet 
in the church is worn, and he persuades an 
organization of women to replace it. He 
notices that the gas eats up the fresh air, 
and he persuades the men to install electric 
lights. There are a good many children 
going wild in the town; he finds a way to 
gather them in, interesting them in profit- 
able and enjoyable occupation. The sex- 
ton falls ill suddenly; the parson builds the 
fire and rings the bell. The parishioners 
congratulate themselves upon the invariable 
order and promptness of all the functions of 
the parish, little knowing that to one ener- 
getic and practical man, their pastor, all 
this system is due. In great things and in 
little he is a practical man. 

The practical man is more apt to be un- 
derrated by himself than by others. But 
all men fail, as a rule, to recognize that to 
be thoroughly practical in all the relation- 
ships of life brings one close to genius. And 
without some dash of the practical, men 
possessing conspicuous qualities are prone 



50 THE MINISTRY 

to abject failure. If, therefore, a man is so 
humble about his qualifications that he sees 
in his nature nothing to give but practical 
service, let him lift his head, and confi- 
dently ask admission to the ministry. The 
Church needs practical men. Not improb- 
ably the man who has been faithful in the 
details of a small work will be sought to 
come up higher. Posts of responsible lead- 
ership in the Church await men of practical 
genius. One might think that the practical 
man would easily be found. Evidently it 
is not so; for in all departments of leader- 
ship, there are men, both blind and ineffi- 
cient, attempting to keep their huge house- 
hold in order, and lamentably failing. They 
have not the practical gift. There is space, 
in all directions, for the man who is first of 
all practical. 

VII 

THE REFORMER 

No young man who thinks can be satis- 
fied with the world as it is to-day. Every 
man with a conscience knows that if right- 
eousness more firmly rules the world, vast 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 51 

changes must come. We sigh for the com- 
parative peace and plenty before the Great 
War; but if we try to remember what we 
knew of the opening decade of the twen- 
tieth century, we do not long to return to 
its conditions. Out of it came the hideous 
scandal of a world war, and we know by 
the years which have passed since the armis- 
tice that even war has not paid the awful 
debt of human sin which the world allowed 
to roll up. It is a hopeful sign that the 
places where young men congregate seethe 
with dissatisfaction. Many a man wonders 
vaguely if he could by any possible art or 
toil contribute to the reconstruction which 
is obviously demanded; and then he won- 
ders wistfully if he could work out his share 
of the reconstruction as an officer in the 
Christian Church. 

The Church would welcome him on one 
condition. Before I name that one condi- 
tion, I must sweep away certain misconcep- 
tions which hang about the minds of most 
of the eager reformers outside the Church. 
The first of these misconceptions is that the 
Church is so conservative that it will cast 
out any one who tries to change the existing 



52 THE MINISTRY 

order of society. There are timid souls in 
the Church to-day as there have been timid 
souls all through its history. But as they 
have had little influence upon its life in the 
past, so they have little influence to-day. 
From the time of our Saviour Himself the 
men who have led, have cut ruthlessly across 
the prejudices of their time, and they have 
always carried the oncoming generations 
with them. Majorities do not count if the 
minority (even a minority of one) is on the 
side of God. The human and fallible part 
of the Church may persecute and slay its 
reformers; the divine and imperishable part 
of the Church will give these reformers the 
victory, not only in the next world but in 
this. The Church gives the reformer the 
only reward a brave man can desire; that 
is, ultimate and permanent success. 

Another misconception is that the leaders 
of the Church are hostile to reform. What- 
ever may have been true of other days, the 
leaders now are waiting in hope for the 
youth who will show a better way. No 
more conservative body of Church leaders 
could be found than the Bishops of the An- 
glican Communion assembled at the Lam- 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 53 

beth Conference in London in the summer 
of 1920. One of the most observant of 
these bishops, a man past seventy, said that 
to him the most marked feature of the 
conference was the deference with which 
the older men listened to their younger 
brethren. All recognized the need of re- 
form. The younger men, with their ten- 
dency to radical ideas, were given a chance 
to say what they would have the Church 
do. And the reports of the conference 
were much more modern and bold than the 
average congregation, sitting in the same 
deliberate fashion, would have produced. 
The Church leaders for whom a young man 
would have most respect to-day are open 
to conviction. They want the ardent re- 
former in the Church. They will give him 
a hearing so respectful that it may be called 
reverent, because they suspect that the 
youth may speak for the Lord. If he can 
prove his mission, they will give him a 
chance to lead. 

Now I am ready to announce the one 
condition on which the Church will wel- 
come the reformer. Let me put this con- 
dition in the words which Edward Lincoln 



54 THE MINISTRY 

Atkinson, a young clergyman, wrote to an 
ardent social reformer who wondered if the 
ministry might be the proper place for him : 

Your letter warms my heart and stirs my 
enthusiasm. If your chief work is to be an 
agitator and *' talker" — ^just putting a new creed 
on the market — I say, hesitate. Has your move- 
ment men of will as against emotions and vo- 
cabularies, men who themselves, single-handed, 
will resolve upon a course and immediately 
show those who care to look that they have 
started out upon it? All of us Easterners fail 
somehow to incarnate our principles into ac- 
tion. If you can act, I say God bless you and 
let you go — to become a god too. The heathen 
were right — the gods rain and thunder. They 
do things. Don't think I am afraid of fanati- 
cism. I am only afraid of inaction. Let some- 
body die game, as John Brown died. I wish we 
could make success a duty. If you go into it, 
you must be willing to succeed the way Brown 
did — and that means being a ** fanatic'* and 
"game" to the end — which often is appropri- 
ately death. 

This does not mean for one moment that 
the social reformer in the ministry shall 
not plead for what he sees to be needed in 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 55 

revising the social organism. He must 
gain all the knowledge he can, and speak 
all the wisdom God shall give him to speak. 
But as he sees men in relationship and in 
the group, he must not lose sight of the 
individual. His whole time must not be 
spent in the announcement of wholesale 
methods, in the hopeless attempt to re- 
deem the mass in the mass. Even if a 
man's chief sin is in his wrong relationship 
to his brother men, and even if this wrong- 
headed man be multiplied into millions, 
yet the reformer must begin with the re- 
construction of individual men. When one 
man is made a consciously renewed man, 
he is as leaven. The yeast begins to work; 
there is hope that the whole lump will be 
leavened. The reformer's imposing pro- 
gramme comes down from the clouds and 
is alive in humanity. It is demonstrated 
to be workable. 

If the Church is to have reformers in 
succession to the great ones of the past, it 
must have men who aspire to make this 
world the kingdom of God and of His 
Christ; that is, a really Christian organism 
and not a loosely assorted collection of 



56 THE MINISTRY 

Christian individuals; nor may they think 
loosely of the kingdom as an expansive, 
intangible vapor; they must think of it as 
the sum of the subjects of the King, with 
responsibilities to one another and to Him, 
and they must initiate their reform by 
kneeling down, as their Lord knelt down, 
and they must wash the feet of those, 
whom, one by one, they would recreate in 
the image of Christ. 

One evening in London I stood in Hyde 
Park and listened to a missionary from 
China, who preached to a throng of men 
from a wooden pulpit. He told of a theo- 
logical student who was being examined 
for Orders. The examiner said, ''What 
would you say, if a man asked you, 'What 
shall I do to be saved?''' The young man 
answered promptly, "I should say. Sir, 'Do 
you mean business?'" That is exactly the 
answer the best men in the Church will 
give to the question of the youthful re- 
former when he asks if the Church wants 
him. If he means business, if he will put 
his theories into the individual life, if he 
will work for Peter and Mary and Paul 
and John, and through them start his glo- 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 57 

rious conceptions into history, then the 
Church not only wants him, but even begs 
him to come in. The Church is always 
being reformed. If any man sees a way 
to make our age the greatest period of re- 
formation of all time, let him dare to 
dream, to serve, to meet opposition, if need 
be to die for his cause, and then let him rest 
confident that the Church will number him 
with all the saints, and strive to continue 
his work till it meets perfection in the 
kingdom fulfilled. 

VIII 

THE MYSTIC 

If one may judge from the wide-spread 
interest in books on prayer and on mysti- 
cism there is reason to believe that a great 
many people in our time are confident 
that they have found a direct approach 
to God. Modest and reticent youth do not 
care to talk of the deepest emotions of 
their souls, but undoubtedly many earnest 
young men who are thinking of the possi- 
bility of the ministry are mystics. With- 
out minimizing the value of historic Chris- 



58 THE MINISTRY 

tianity, they feel that they have a more 
immediate proof of God's revelation than 
any book or institution can show. They 
daily meet God face to face. They may 
not have any theological terms to explain 
their conviction. They find equally wel- 
come the words of Christ, '^Lo, I am with 
you alway'' and '*The Father shall give 
you another Comforter (which is the Holy 
Ghost), that he may abide with you for 
ever." They exult in the words of St. 
Paul, ^'For I am persuaded, that neither 
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principali- 
ties, nor powers, nor things present, nor 
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor 
any other creature, shall be able to sepa- 
rate us from the love of God which is in 
Christ Jesus our Lord." And again their 
hearts respond when they read, ''The Spirit 
itself beareth witness with our Spirit, that 
we are the children of God." They are 
humbly yet confidently on intimate terms 
with the Most High. 

The Church always welcomes the mystic. 
Now and again, in so far as he is obedient 
to his heavenly vision, he becomes the 
saint who dominates not only his own tiine 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 59 

and place, but also the times that come 
after, in countries far separated from his 
own home. He gives men a sense of the 
presence of God, because, if his goodness 
match his devotion, God shines through 
him. He comforts as no other in sorrow. 
He stimulates the flimsy will. He con- 
founds the compromise of the worldling, 
and encourages the daring of the man 
whose eye is single. He makes men know 
how truly God cares for them; how truly 
God protects them; how truly God lives 
for them and in them. 

Like every other genius, the mystic has 
his base imitator. The fraudulent mystic 
creates his god out of his selfish prejudices 
and conceits, and then falls down and wor- 
ships his image in the cloud. Men shrink 
from this pseudo-mystic. He is abhorrent, 
in proportion to his vanity and irreverence. 
But he is so rarely a young man that we 
need not dwell on the unhappy picture. 

There are young men looking forward to 
a life deeper and deeper in the knowledge 
and the love of God. They may be uncer- 
tain whether in the distractions of the 
ministry they will be able to keep high their 



6o THE MINISTRY 

ideal of communion with God. They may 
fear, and not unreasonably, the too fre- 
quent and familiar contact with the ex- 
ternal processes of religion. They may 
suspect that many in the Church are not 
quite in earnest, are conventional, are only 
nominally submitting to Christ's complete 
dominance. They may dread disillusion- 
ment. The mystic fears a grave risk when 
he binds his life to an institution. But the 
Church cries out for the mystic, and in all 
ages even extreme ecclesiasticism has been 
consistent with fervent mysticism. Shall 
one not count one's own security a little 
thing, if the other children of the heavenly 
Father may catch the blessed privilege of 
union with Him, if true religion may be 
spread farther and farther in the world till 
the joy of fellowship with God fills the earth 
as now it fills the heavens? Will one not 
run into danger of losing God by trying to 
possess Him in isolation ? The selfish mys- 
tic is in more serious peril than the mystic 
in bad company. God reveals Himself to 
love which ignores its own safety, and rises 
to that hill on which the loving Son of God 
gave His life. 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 6i 

If you are a mystic, give your life where 
your mysticism, being lost, will be for ever 
found. Come into the ministry of the 
Church and teach men to find God, that He 
may be revealed to them what He always 
has been to them (though they knew it 
not), their Saviour and their Friend. 

IX 

THE COMPOSITE TYPE 

No one who reads this chapter will see 
himself wholly inr any one of these types 
which I have tried to describe. One is cer- 
tain to claim a portion of two or more of 
the types. All of us, so far as we analyze 
ourselves, discover that we are composite. 
One is a practical mystic with imagination. 
Another is a vigorous personality with a 
sense of humor and a joy in practical re- 
ligion. I suspect that of all possibilities 
the composite type is the most useful in 
the world; therefore God takes pains to 
give us variety in our characters. Resting 
in His love, we may believe that He will 
accept in the ministry of His Church all 
the qualities which we reverently and un- 



62 THE MINISTRY 

selfishly use in His Name. '* There are 
diversities of gifts but the same Spirit." 

Examples abound. Charles Kingsley was 
a practical pastor, preaching homely ser- 
mons to his village flock. At the same time 
he had such vivid imagination that he repro- 
duced in his novels the early Christian ages 
(as in Hypatia), or the age of Elizabeth (as 
in Westward Ho!). Moreover he was vi- 
tally interested in social reform (as in 
Yeast and Alton Locke). And his physical 
prowess entered into all his varied success. 
To turn to Kingsley's great antagonist, 
John Henry Newman, we find a man who 
joined skill in theology (as demonstrated in 
his History of the Arians) to subtle imagina- 
tion (as we see it in his Dream of Gerontius). 
We think of Henry Ward Beecher, not only 
the rapt prophet, but the powerful reformer. 

Very often in such fusion of qualities, 
one desirable quality, seeming almost essen- 
tial, may be quite lacking. For example, 
a great preacher, able to fire men's souls, 
may have so fragile a body as to be ex- 
hausted after each sermon, making him 
doubt if ever he can preach again. One 
of the most glorious preachers of all time 



TYPES FOR THE MINISTRY 63 

was Frederick William Robertson, but his 
body was so inadequate to its task that at 
thirty-seven he was gone from the weakness 
and limitations of this world ; leaving, how- 
ever, behind him the report of sermons 
which perhaps have influenced more men 
and women than any preacher's whose ser- 
mons have come down to us. Another ex- 
ample of a similar victory over physical 
weakness is George Tyrrell. The short- 
sighted policy which would exclude all frail 
constitutions from the ministry would de- 
prive the church o£ some of its most inspir- 
ing leaders. The question to ask, as one 
looks towards the ministry is not what lack 
there may be here or there, but what are 
the positive capacities which can transcend 
defects, and bring to the Church a superb 
gift of human service. 

In any case, the most useful men are they 
who combine in their characters and attain- 
ments several of these types. Thus the 
ministry is made rich; and men know that 
it attracts and uses the most varied and win- 
ning of human traits. Do not despair be- 
cause you feel yourself weak in one or other 
of the characteristics, but select your 



64 THE MINISTRY 

strongest good, strengthen it in itself, and 
build about it so staunch a wall of other 
qualities, that it will give to your ministry 
color and joy and abounding fruit. 



V 

THE PREPARATION 

If a young man, receiving an intimation 
that the ministry is for him, wishes to test 
that intimation, he will naturally ask what 
would be required of him should he decide 
ultimately to be a clergyman. Before he 
examines what would be expected of him in 
the actual exercise of the ministry he must 
find out whether he is willing to take the 
time and to do the work which (by the 
experience of others) would make him use- 
ful upon his ordination. 

I 

IN SCHOOL 

If a boy in a high school, or in a boarding- 
school, should feel the impulse to consider 
the ministry as his vocation, he ought to 
make up his mind to go to college. Excel- 
lent clergymen have had no college train- 
ing; but they did not deliberately omit it. 

65 



66 THE MINISTRY 

The call to the ministry has come to them 
in business or in the law or in medicine. 
They cannot prepare now as they might 
have prepared had they seen in boyhood 
what their final calling was to be. The mo- 
ment a boy sees the ministry before him, 
he should desire the best education he can 
get. And he should determine that the 
first part of that education should be to fit 
himself for college. 

Since the kind of college course one shall 
take is partly determined by the studies of 
one's preparatory education, some thought 
must be given to the courses one shall 
choose in school. Latin and Greek should 
be started as early as possible, that one 
may go on with them in college. Doubt- 
less many have understood the New Testa- 
ment who have not known Greek, but no 
one who has really studied the New Testa- 
ment in Greek would willingly give up the 
subtle insight which an accurate knowledge 
of the Greek language has given him into 
the truth of the New Testament. Latin 
is equally important: it is an indispensable 
element in the equipment of a cultivated 
man. That it is a dead language, that it 



THE PREPARATION 67 

is not obviously practical to learn it, is one 
reason why it is well to learn it. The long 
experience of educated men is by no means 
to be offset by the suspicious questionings 
of a generation, almost past, which set too 
great store on what it narrowly called 
''practical." 

If some immediate proof be needed for 
the value of Latin and Greek, apart from 
the training in exactness and intellectual 
toil, it is particularly wise to remember 
that nothing so stimulates a boy or a man 
to concise and varied expression in English 
as the translation of a Greek or Latin 
classic into the vernacular. As a boy 
grows to see the shades of meaning in an 
ancient foreign word his own English vo- 
cabulary is enlarged to meet the need. 
The best English is written, not by the 
quacks in literature who go far afield to be 
queer and startling in their use of words, 
but by the experts who have come, through 
the years, to an exact knowledge how most 
simply to express in English the intricate 
thought which has been presented to them 
in another language. This is particularly 
true of Latin and Greek, because they are, 



68 THE MINISTRY 

to a large extent, the foundation of English. 

The old prescribed course of school and 
college — Greek, Latin, mathematics, with 
only a misty fringe of history, science, 
and modern literature — may never return. 
Very likely we may have something better 
if we keep steadfastly in mind that some 
things are to be thoroughly learned, and 
that we shall not be content with a general 
smattering of the beginnings of many things. 
One of the college courses for which one 
will make ready in school is some course in 
science. The clergyman who knows some- 
thing in science fairly well is a more useful 
man. He may be interested in botany, 
in geology, in astronomy. Rather than 
have a superficial knowledge of every branch 
of science (even if that were possible), far 
better is it for him to fix upon a natural 
science which commands his enthusiasm 
from the first. He may wisely consider 
this in his school days. 

Every high school or boarding-school in- 
cludes courses in English reading. But 
aside from such prescribed courses, the boy 
ought to be reading, for diversion, certain 
of the great American and English story- 



THE PREPARATION 69 

tellers. He ought to know Washington 
Irving, Hawthorne, Stevenson, Dickens, 
Thackeray, Walter Scott. These will all 
require some effort on his part. Each is 
quite different from all the rest. The cheap 
and easy tale of the day he may read with- 
out harm; he can hardly read it with much 
profit. The youth of seventeen who can- 
not speak intelligently of Rip Van Winkle, 
David Balfour, Mr. Micawber, Henry Es- 
mond, Colonel Newcome, Quentin Dur- 
ward — and a good many others besides — 
has wasted his hours of freedom. Even if 
he is quite sure that he is to go Into the 
ministry, no sane guide wishes or expects 
him to read St. Augustine's Confessions^ 
Thomas a Kempis's Imitation, or Jeremy 
Taylor's Holy Dying. The boy would not 
understand them if he did read them. His 
religious reading should be the religious 
reading of every wholesome normal boy. 
The four Gospels should be his main de- 
pendence. Over and over let them be 
read; then let him catch the music of Ro- 
mans viii, I Corinthians xiii. Psalms xxiii, 
xxiv, xxvii, xlii, Ixxxiv, ciii, and cxxi, Isaiah 
xl, and then the stories of Jacob, Joseph, 



70 THE MINISTRY 

David, and all the rest of the immortal 
company in the Bible. But it is the life 
of Christ he must know — the plain New 
Testament story, without commentary or 
book of interpretation. He must know 
this first and last, and all the days between. 
It is the only religious reading in school 
days which a boy needs, for it is the best 
of all, and he can understand it. 

II 

IN COLLEGE 

In college the less a man thinks of the 
courses which will specifically fit him for 
the ministry, the better. What he needs 
is a broad general education which will fit 
him to be an intelligent companion for all 
sorts of people, a man who can sympathize 
with the best intellectual effort of all grades 
of society. For instance it would be ab-- 
surd for him to take a course in Hebrew in 
college. If he is to study Hebrew, that 
belongs to his professional course in the 
theological school. So, too, he ought not 
to take a course in ecclesiastical history. 
He needs every day of the college years for 



THE PREPARATION 71 

the general foundation of an educated man. 
There are courses, such as English writing, 
psychology, and sociology, which, while 
contributing to general culture, do have 
especial meaning for one later entering the 
ministry. Of these I shall speak presently. 

^s college courses are now planned, there 
are varied groupings of courses by which a 
man may come to the day when he receives 
his degree, with some satisfaction in the 
knowledge he has gained. 

Because the ministry is set to bring the 
Gospel home to the hearts of the people 
through the life and teaching of qualified 
teachers, it is important to catch the power 
of great teachers so far as the student may 
come in contact with them. In every uni- 
versity, in most colleges, there are two or 
three pre-eminent men. They have some- 
thing more than knowledge of their subject. 
They do know exact facts, and can tell 
them; but to this dry accomplishment they 
add what we variously call '* magnetism," 
''personality,'' ''greatness.'' It is an inde- 
finable quality, but every alert young man 
feels it. A young man may not safely 
fasten upon one such teacher and straight- 



72 THE MINISTRY 

way lose himself in him, satisfied to be his 
pale reflection, his tinkling echo. By fol- 
lowing in college two or three teachers of 
this caliber, the impressionable youth may 
find his own soul taking on strength and 
beauty. Because his masters are strong 
and copies of no one, he must be strong, 
master of his own soul, a man preparing 
to be a guide and strength to others. The 
first thought in selecting college courses is 
to talk with upper classmen and recent 
graduates, and so discover who are the 
great teachers. One must acquire some 
measure of their power. 

Ordinarily the student will find that the 
man who in a masterful way gives himself 
to a subject of learning is teaching some- 
thing which the eager man will desire to 
know. Sometimes a university is so fortu- 
nate as to have so many really distin- 
guished men as teachers that an under- 
graduate must decide which of the geniuses 
he may pass by in order to gain the inspira- 
tion of others. However this may be, there 
are certain courses which he will strive to 
include in his four years. 

I have already spoken of Latin and 



THE PREPARATION 73 

Greek, and of one branch of natural sci- 
ence. I need say no more of the impor- 
tance of pursuing Latin and Greek in col- 
lege for the sake of general culture; but I 
do wish to add a few words about the im- 
portance of a stiff college course in some 
branch of natural science. Experience dem- 
onstrates that engineers, and other men 
strictly trained in science, are exact and 
precise in their use of words. Most men 
who must speak often — preachers, legis- 
lators, and others — tend to be diffuse. 
Sometimes they seem to have no thought 
whatever hidden away in a sea of words; 
at other times they exaggerate their feel- 
ings and emotions, or they distort the truth 
by overemphasis upon a tiny fragment. 
Men shrug their shoulders and whisper, 
'*He is slopping over again"; or, '*You 
can't depend on him." A preacher was 
once describing the merry song of a bird 
in the wet and crash of a thunder-storm, 
as an illustration of courage. He was 
drawing on his imagination — and igno- 
rance. Two ornithologists chanced to be in 
the congregation; one tapped the other's 
arm, saying, ''John, Til give ten thousand 



74 THE MINISTRY 

dollars for that bird.'* The study of a 
natural science will be conducive to clear 
thinking, to a sharper value of its expres- 
sion, to an honest discrimination between 
what is known to the speaker and what is 
not known. The discipline of a scientific 
course in college will cultivate such con- 
ciseness and exactness as shall give to the 
listener to certain sermons, three or five years 
hence, an honorable attention and respect. 
Then the student should elect rigid 
courses in English writing. These are 
needed not so much to stimulate utterance 
as to train the mind to find the clearest 
words to express the truth. Serious boys 
thinking of the ministry are prone to have 
a disastrous facility together with a ten- 
dency to fine writing. Their emotions are 
deep. Under the encouragement of the 
English department they tell what they 
think; fortunately for them, clever men, 
not unsympathetic, reveal the much-ado- 
about-little which goes rolling on page 
after page. Once a college freshman wrote 
of his feelings when he heard a magnificent 
organ played by a famous musician. The 
revered teacher Wrote in red ink across its 



THE PREPARATION 75 

cover: ''Fifty years ago this would have 
been called very beautiful. I don't like 
it/' It was a disappointing day for the 
youth; but a day for which soon he was 
giving thanks. To learn early in college 
to write clear, direct, honest, forcible Eng- 
lish is a valuable asset for any future; it is 
particularly valuable for one whose future 
is the Christian ministry. 

Another department of learning which 
the college undergraduate should explore, 
at least for a short distance, is philosophy. 
I remember gratefully, in my own case, 
courses in Greek philosophy, ethics, Ger- 
man thought from Kant to Hegel, and 
Cosmology — chiefly a criticism of Herbert 
Spencer. My college happened to have a 
philosophical department rich at that time 
in truly great teachers. Much of the 
ground covered by philosophy in college 
is covered by theology in the divinity 
school; but it is covered in a distinctly 
different way. In college one is sitting 
beside men who are more apt to turn out 
to be bankers, merchants, writers, teachers, 
than clergymen. The student absorbs the 
lectures not consciously as a man soon to 



76 THE MINISTRY 

be a theological student, but as a man 
among men. It is truth for truth's sake, 
and not for any ultimate use to which it 
may be put. Besides this, the teachers 
themselves would rarely qualify as teachers 
in any theological school, even if they were 
willing to try. So long as there are people 
in the world whose doctrines do not tally 
with the accepted tenets of orthodox the- 
ology it is well that a young man, who 
must live and teach in a world where such 
leaders have enormous influence, should 
know what they teach. To respect their 
honesty, to become oneself a capable judge 
of evidence, of logic, of intuitive truth, to 
be so well taught that one is both free 
enough and wise enough to criticise the con- 
clusions of a learned man, that is the bene- 
fit of philosophy soundly taught in a credit- 
able university. It is quite true that some 
young men lose their balance, become either 
frightened chickens or cringing parrots; in 
the latter instance they are quite apt to go 
on asking themselves philosophical riddles 
to the end of their days, and never put 
their hands to any practical task. But the 
normal youth finds his mind, and some- 



THE PREPARATION 77 

times his soul, in these stiff courses of frank, 
unhampered thought. 

It would be strange if in early youth the 
person who is determined to go into the 
ministry did not enter a period of religious 
depression and intellectual doubt. Any one 
who has some knowledge of the interior ex- 
perience of men who have become clergy- 
men is aware that the man who does not 
enter this period of testing is the exception. 
The time of doubt varies. It may be in 
school, in college, in the theological semi- 
nary, in the first parish, sometimes in the 
full tide of a man's power. If it is early 
the student sometimes gives up his prep- 
aration for the ministry; if it is later, the 
clergyman sometimes gives up his parish 
and enters secular life. But the strongest 
men, sure of the faith within them, face the 
storm, conquer their fears and their doubts, 
and come forth to teach with a conviction 
which has been bought with a price; they 
are the inspiration of the world about them. 
Because this dreary and black day is most 
apt to come in college, I must speak of it 
here. 

The collegian ought to know that he is 



78 THE MINISTRY 

not unfortunate if he feels the difficulties 
of faith in. a world teeming with theories 
how best to explain the countless mysteries 
which human psychology and modern sci- 
ence have revealed. The university where 
scholarship is most unhampered may have 
influential scholars in professorial chairs who 
are indifferent to the doctrines of Christian- 
ity. They are rarely aggressively negative; 
they are usually only agnostic. If such 
people, with their commanding influence, 
are in the world — and they are — it is much 
better that they should be met in college 
than in any other place. For there they 
stand with others equally accredited to 
teach. And among the others are massive 
personalities, aglow with enthusiasm and 
well-reasoned knowledge, eager to bear wit- 
ness to the truth which the Christian Church 
has taught all down the centuries. 

When, therefore, a young man in college 
finds that some shining light in the college 
world reveals the barrenness of his convic- 
tions, he is not bound to fight his battle 
alone. It is only good intellectual fairness 
which would cause him to turn to the other 
strong men whom he respects and who may 



THE PREPARATION 79 

fortify his wavering faith. Because he has 
seen the depths he may be the better able 
to scale the heights. When a young man 
was warned not to enter a certain univer- 
sity because the faith which his home had 
given him would be imperilled by the free- 
dom of utterance, Phillips Brooks wrote: 
"There are young men there of every form 
of religious faith, and many who have no 
faith. There are scoffers, perhaps there 
are blasphemers. There are also earnest, 
noble, consecrated Christian men, and many 
souls seeking a light and truth which they 
have not yet found. You will meet in the 
college what you will meet in the world. 
You will have to choose what you will be, 
as you will have to choose all your life. 
You will find all the help which Christian 
friends and Christian services can give to a 
young man whose real reliance must be on 
God and his own soul.'' Bishop Brooks 
was thinking more especially of a man's 
fellow students, but the words would apply 
with equal force to a man's teachers. 

A graduate of the University of Wales 
told me that the most stimulating part of 
his undergraduate life was participation in 



8o THE MINISTRY 

discussion classes (a method first introduced 
in German universities). Under the gui- 
dance of one of the professors a voluntary 
group (varying from twelve to fifty in num- 
ber, usually about twenty) would meet for 
informal discussion. The topics might be, 
for example, ''William James's Theory of 
Emotions," or "Bradley's Appearance and 
Reality," or ''Ethical Consciousness," or 
"The Development of Self." There was a 
good battle always; criticism was unembar- 
rassed; doubts were fearlessly uncovered; 
issues were boldly met. Men found their 
convictions, and were inspired. Men who 
take advanced courses in American univer- 
sities know something of this method in so- 
called seminars; but these are apt to be 
technical, and are always confined to men 
interested in one narrow field of research. 
To assemble students with varied points of 
view, to have the scientific student attack 
the student of metaphysics, and to have 
both send the fire of their scepticism into the 
faith of the student of a formal theology, is 
excellent discipline for every one, especially 
for the man who hopes later to preach the 
Gospel to thoughful men. 



THE PREPARATION 8i 

In general, then, the man looking for- 
ward to the ministry will spend his time in 
college acquiring what will make him an 
intelligent man among men. He must be 
sure to know something well. To be ver- 
satile, to be able to talk on many subjects, 
is not valuable, unless there be a foundation 
of true learning — one subject on which you 
may venture to talk with experts. But, 
granted that a man have some solid acquire- 
ment, there are certain branches of learning 
of which one may begin to know something 
in college with the hope of going farther in 
one's own private reading in after-years. 
Among the courses which one will decide 
to be necessary are certainly Latin, Greek, 
one branch of natural science, ethics, psy- 
chology, English writing, at least one mod- 
em language (French or German, according 
as one has learned one or other in school); 
and among the courses which one will 
choose, in addition, according to one's en- 
thusiasm and the power of those who teach 
them, will be courses in philosophy, in 
economics, a brief period of history inten- 
sively studied, some one of the fine arts, 
and the knowledge of some language in 



82 THE MINISTRY 

order to study thoroughly some outstand- 
ing genius (for example, ItaHan, to intro- 
duce one to Dante). Four years are a 
short time, and one cannot wisely seize 
upon too many subjects. Mistakes are in- 
evitable. But if a college graduate really 
knows something, has a vision at least how 
wide and diverse is human knowledge, and, 
in the end, respects accuracy and truth, 
he has spent four years to marvellous ad- 
vantage. He is making a good journey 
towards the ministry of Him who called 
Himself Son of Man. 

Ill 

THE CHOICE OF A THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL 

In choosing a theological school many 
elements enter in. Convenience (either of 
neighborhood or of expense) ought not to 
be a deciding factor. A school which has 
even one really great and inspiring teacher 
upon its faculty is worth considering. Ed- 
wards Park at Andover, Alexander V. G. 
Allen at Cambridge, George Park Fisher at 
Yale, William Porcher du Bose at Sewanee, 
and Walter Rauschenbusch at Rochester, 



THE PREPARATION 83 

were the magnets which drew keen-minded 
youth to their seminaries. To know any 
one of these men, as a pupil knows a friendly 
master, was in itself a liberal education. 
Much more than the information bearing 
upon an important course of study was 
acquired from them. They opened doors, 
whence men could look out into the wide 
reaches of learning and original thought. 
Even a rather stupid man caught a glimpse 
of what it was to be a Christian scholar. 

An indispensable element in the theo- 
logical school to be chosen is that its faculty 
surely know the past and the present knowl- 
edge which has been gathered within their 
respective departments. There are some 
men who know all that the Fathers of the 
first three centuries said about the Epistle 
to the Romans and the Fourth Gospel, but 
whose only acquaintance with later reflec- 
tion upon these books is the fugitive article 
in some half-popular magazine. There are 
others who know practically every modem i 
theory about the New Testament but who 
have no interest in any thought recorded 
before the year 1850. I do not know that 
in any seminary of theological learning 



84 THE MINISTRY 

either of these defective classes of teachers 
is represented. But I have suspected it 
sometimes. If a wide-awake young man 
is going to study theology he must desire 
to sit under a teacher who is neither afraid 
nor indolent. Pitiful is the case of a man 
who goes placidly through his theological 
course, and five or ten years after his ordi- 
nation discovers that there was a Tubingen 
Hypothesis, or a man named Strauss, or 
another named Darwin. 

The seminary is the place in which to 
face squarely all the difficulties which beset 
inherited faith, and also to extract, from 
what at first seem difficulties, the genuine 
contribution towards a firmer and larger or- 
thodoxy. Bishop Wilberforce thought the 
doctrine of Evolution the thief which would 
steal away men's faith in God the Creator; 
the modern bishop, using the doctrine of 
Evolution to illustrate the ancient Chris- 
tian doctrine of design, sees in the continu- 
ous process of creation the indwelling Spirit 
of God. The Bishop of Natal, fifty years 
ago, believed that to question the tradition- 
ally received information about the authors 
and dates of the Old Testament would be 



THE PREPARATION 85 

to endanger men's faith in the Bible. To- 
day every thoughtful leader in the Church 
Universal knows that the Bible is quite 
capable of protecting its own truth ; and the 
w^hiter the light which beats upon its pages, 
the more distinct will its divine message be. 
These are simple illustrations from com- 
paratively recent history to show how dan- 
gerous are those teachers who try to shut 
up the truth into their tiny systems. The 
only safe theological school is the school 
where the teachers care first of all for the 
truth from whatever source it may come, 
and whithersoever it may lead. 

The theological school is, first of all, a 
school of sound learning. But a school 
might be learned, and yet most inade- 
quately fit a man for the ministry. While, 
therefore, you are casting your eye over the 
theological seminaries, you need to ask 
whether the seminary you are inclined to 
select produces men who are enthusiastic 
in what, for want of a better term, we may 
call religion. The test which most con- 
cerned the anxious relative of the new 
dominie in The Bonnie Brier Bushy was 
that he should in his first sermon speak a 



86 THE MINISTRY 

good word for Jesus Christ. It was the 
rehgion of the young man for which she 
was awaiting some infaUible sign. Rehgion 
is easily parodied. PhiUips Brooks used to 
tell of his first evening at the theological 
seminary. He went to a prayer meeting, 
and was utterly discouraged because he felt 
that he never could rise to the exuberant 
piety of his classmates. The next morning, 
he told us, he was the only man in the class 
who had learned his lesson in New Testa- 
ment Greek. Religion must come to the 
surface, but what appears must be the real 
thing, and not a vapor, however richly 
colored. 

In a truly faithful theological school re- 
spect for sound learning and willingness to 
express religious enthusiasm must go side 
by side. To be merely exact and pains- 
taking leaves a man dry, cold, forbidding; 
to be merely exuberant leaves a man super- 
ficial, and therefore to the earnest inquirer 
utterly disappointing. If you find gradu- 
ates from the seminary you have almost 
chosen not only solid in their attainment 
but fervent in their devotion to the Lord 
Christ then you may clinch your decision. 



THE PREPARATION 87 

That IS a good school for you to choose. 
You may hope to grow In its halls into a 
serious and joyful messenger of the Master 
who said, '* I am one that hath told you the 
truth." 

IV 

IN A THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL 

Once in a theological seminary, what may 
one expect? I suppose that most laymen 
imagine that a theological school is like a 
mausoleum — ^very dignified and proper, but 
so solemn as to verge upon despair. To 
those of us who have had the privilege of a 
really good theological school, the seminary 
is like a garden. It has no tomb-like walls. 
The garden is an old garden. Saints and 
scholars have walked there long years ago. 
Some of the trees are old, some were planted 
only this year. There are some picturesque 
ruins, but the new part of the palace is 
comfortable in the sunlight. And through 
the garden walk pleasant friends, all intent 
upon one thing — how to be messengers of 
that Radiant Person who walks in the gar- 
den in the cool of the day. There is play 



88 THE MINISTRY 

and much laughter, as well as study and 
reverent worship. The fellowship is not 
only student with student, but it Is often 
student with teacher. Quite often the best 
friend won in that varied garden is the 
learned master who at first seemed too far 
along the path for one to catch up with him 
to confer with him upon the things con- 
cerning the Kingdom of God. 

What I desire to make clear is that there 
is no more normal life than life in a theo- 
logical school. For many a man there have 
been no happier years than the three years 
spent there. Part of the happiness comes 
from the fact that all the tentative deci- 
sions of the past are fulfilled in the definite 
decision upon a life-work. The man is 
upon the final stretch of road which leads 
to his vocation. The possibilities of other 
roads are taken from his mind. His heart 
is fixed. 

Part of the joy is the discovery that 
the student's companions are all passing 
through the same exultant experience. In 
college some men were thinking how much 
money they could make as bankers, or 
how famous they might be as lawyers, or 



THE PREPARATION 89 

what discovery they might make as physi- 
cians, or what invention they might pro- 
duce as engineers, and so on, almost indefi- 
nitely. These dreams and hopes were all 
good, some of course higher than others, 
but they were dissimilar, a mixture of al- 
truism and selfishness in varying degrees. 
Now, though the physical journey from 
college to seminary may have been only 
half a mile, the spiritual journey may have 
been the length of a universe. In the truly 
adequate seminary adequately furnished 
with students, the men will all have their 
faces in one direction. They are prepar- 
ing for a life which is to be for others, most 
of all for God and His Christ. Later they 
may become self-centred, conceited, sel- 
fishly ambitious, worldly. But they are 
now caught in a garden of beautiful ideals. 
And they are all looking the same way. 

I am not thinking merely of my own 
happy experience. I have heard the same 
testimony given by others, not now and 
then, but constantly. Very often I have 
known a man to hesitate in starting upon 
the theological course. Almost always I 
have known such hesitating men to say 



90 THE MINISTRY 

within the first half-year: ''I never sus- 
pected it would be like this ! It is glori- 
ous ! All the men have their faces in the 
same direction/' And there with the proper 
reticence of youth they stop, but we, who 
remember, know that they all are looking 
to Christ, who is saying to them, as He 
has said to disciples all through the years, 
"Follow me/' They are like the first joy- 
ful disciples walking with Jesus by the Sea 
of Galilee. They know at last what it is 
to be ''called,'' not only one by one, but 
as a company. 

The modern theological school is offering 
varied courses. Thirty years ago and less, 
we all studied about the same courses. 
For example, though we might not lisp 
Hebrew in our sleep, we all learned pain- 
fully to read part of Genesis and a few 
Psalms, so that even yet we can under- 
stand a dictionary article which includes 
Hebrew words. Now, unless a man has a 
special bent for Hebrew or intends to teach 
it, he is not required to elect it. He is 
expected, if he be dispensed from Hebrew, 
to take some course equally strenuous. 
Whether a man acquire his knowledge of 



THE PREPARATION 91 

the Old Testament through its ancient 
language or through easier devices, he must 
determine that while he is in the seminary 
he shall know the history, the traditions, 
the inspiration of the Old Testament, and 
the candid interpretation of it as modern 
scholarship understands it. No layman in 
his parish should know more of it than he 
does. 

The New Testament in Greek should be 
known thoroughly. The Gospels and the 
Epistle to the Romans should be known to 
the last iota. And a man should covet 
every atom of knowledge which has ever 
been won for the life of our Saviour. The 
''Lives of Christ" should be studied, that 
one may know how that Life appeals to 
every temperament. 

Church history is next in importance. 
If taught by a master, it will be almost as 
the continuation of the New Testament. 
It will be God's leadership revealed in 
time. It will strengthen faith and give 
one the judgment whereby man's frailty 
may be separated from God's wisdom, and 
one will see where loyalty and service 
should be given. However faithfully in 



92 THE MINISTRY 

college one may have studied any part of 
the last twenty centuries, the same period 
ought to be seen from the point of view of 
the Church. Theology is largely historical, 
and only by seeing its growth in the neces- 
sities of human experience can a man be- 
come fully aware of the inevitability of 
certain doctrines. There are truths which, 
lost or minimized in one age, reassert 
themselves again and again in succeeding 
ages; whereby the conclusion is reached 
that they are inalienable possessions of 
normal and rational humanity. The stu- 
dent who believes that, in spite of all hu- 
man currents, wilfully or unconsciously 
flowing against it, the purpose of God is 
majestically sweeping on through history, 
has a confidence in God which is close to 
the revelation of the divine in the Gospel 
of Christ. To find the Church expressing 
the deepest longings of the human heart 
is to discover that doctrines are not the 
cold, lifeless formulae men sometimes think 
them, but that they are the records of con- 
victions which the best people of their time 
felt and knew in their own experience. 
They become intimations of truth which 



THE PREPARATION 93 

we ourselves, in a distant age, may verify 
in our present experience. Church history is 
a necessary part of every theological course. 
In addition to the discovery of doctrines 
revealed by the Holy Spirit in history, the 
theological student must seek the knowl- 
edge of theology, as one competent teacher 
will declare it to him. Every man who 
preaches the Gospel ought to have in the 
background of his preaching a consistent 
theory of life. This theory will not be ex- 
actly the system of theology which he 
learns from the doctor of divinity who lec- 
tures to him in the theological school. It 
will be influenced by that teaching, but, in 
so far as the master really informs his pupil, 
the pupil will learn that he must test the 
teaching by his own inner experience. He 
must in some way live what he tries to 
think. The experience of the youth is in- 
sufficient to grasp all at once what the 
master tells out of a mature and gracious 
experience. Therefore a good deal of the 
teaching must be stored in the memory 
against the day when the intricate demands 
of human life find in the memory the satis- 
faction of an adequate explanation. 



94 THE MINISTRY 

The English theologian, the late Fred- 
erick Dennison Maurice, warned his disci- 
ples that they must beware of becoming 
slaves to a system. Every good teacher 
would echo this counsel. In the manifold 
mysteries of life, there are some things of 
which a thoughtful man is, in his own mind, 
entirely sure. He may not be able to con- 
vince other nien by cogent reasons; his 
authority may be an intuition which is 
beyond need of proof, so far as he alone is 
concerned. He reaches his conclusions 
partly by reason, partly by what Josiah 
Royce used to call ^'appreciation"; how- 
ever won, these conclusions are, to him, 
solid ground. Beyond these fixed conclu- 
sions there is a vast area of thought where- 
in he holds his theories of life more or less 
as hypotheses. The fundamentals are few 
and substantial. The element of confes- 
sedly uncertain theories may be expected 
to diminish, as a man grows in experience; 
because the working hypothesis which he 
has adopted for this or that section of life 
becomes so satisfactory in meeting the 
vicissitudes of the years that he is content, 
for all practical purposes, to call them 



THE PREPARATION 95 

proved. His system therefore grows as he 
himself grows, in knowledge, in grace, in 
the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. 

The respected teacher of doctrine be- 
stows on his pupil a priceless gift when he 
lays before him the theology which he has 
proved to himself out of the history of 
thought, out of his own reflection, and out 
of his own daily life. The pupil sees what 
are the elder man's convictions. Like St. 
Paul, the master says, ^'This have I re- 
ceived: of this I am sure.'' Like St. Paul, 
he says again, ''Now see we through a 
glass darkly: of this I await the full knowl- 
edge." Under such inspiration the callow 
youth begins to build, fearlessly and hope- 
fully, his own theology. Its loyalty to the 
past includes the command that he prove 
all things to his own honesty. So, when 
the time comes for him to preach, he shall 
bring forth from his own mind doctrines 
which really belong to him; and men, look- 
ing into his clear eyes, shall say, ''That man 
believes with all his life what he utters 
with his lips." 

There may be young men who fancy 
that if they go to a theological school they 



96 THE MINISTRY 

will be taught a hard-and-fast system of 
thought, which will be so precise that all 
they need do in the future is to repeat it, 
word for word, like the multiplication table. 
To the indolent and careless this may be a 
comforting expectation. To the conscien- 
tious and painstaking it will be a night- 
mare. The facts of Christianity are printed 
large on the page of history. The applica- 
tion and interpretation of those facts are, 
of necessity, as varied as human nature is 
varied. There is no greater doctrine than 
the doctrine of the Atonement; but this 
doctrine varies with the light which the 
Holy Spirit has revealed to saints and phil- 
osophers in succeeding periods. The dili- 
gent student receives help from all these 
thoughtful men in the past, in so far as he 
is able to study them, but his own doctrine 
cannot be a copy of any one of them. 
Through all of them the Spirit speaks to 
him, and then the Spirit of God tells him, 
as he awaits the sound of His Voice, the 
truth for him alone. 

Every earnest layman builds up his own 
theology, even though he might call him- 
self an unbeliever. It does not make much 



THE PREPARATION 97 

diflference to his neighbors if the layman is 
not able to tell his convictions; but it makes 
a tremendous difference to the inquiring 
neighbors if a clergyman is not able, in 
some dire calamity which has fallen upon 
them, to assure them of an interpretation 
which is based on interior conviction as he 
has lived and thought it out in the light 
of his discipleship to Christ. Those neigh- 
bors will instantly know whether a clergy- 
man is irreverently rattling off platitudes 
which were sound doctrine for the man who 
taught them, but which have never be- 
come true doctrine to his own experience. 
They will know their man when he com- 
forts them with the assurance, ''Of these 
things I am sure.'' This man has deep 
within his life a reasonable faith. 

An essential part of a course in a theo- 
logical school is the technical preparation 
for preaching sermons. The essential prep- 
aration for preaching is all of a man's 
life. But unless a man can make himself 
clear and can make himself heard, he can- 
not help the people committed to his care. 
The structure of a sermon, its clearness, 
force, conciseness, are all of moment. Of 



98 THE MINISTRY 

vital importance, too, is the training of the 
voice. Many able young men despise the 
teacher of elocution; his teaching seems to 
them artificial. No sane teacher of elocu- 
tion to-day seeks anything but the simplest 
art of speaking intelligently. There is 
something wrong either with the theological 
seminary or with the pupil graduating from 
it, when a man who has spent three years 
in it cannot make himself heard distinctly 
in every part of a church where the acous- 
tics are reasonably good. Besides this he 
should be able to read a chapter from the 
Bible without embarrassment, without stum- 
bling over a single word, and with such 
simple and direct intelligence that every 
man, woman, and child will be compelled to 
listen. If any youth thinks that this can be 
accomplished without training, let him go 
to some city rector, ask to read a chapter 
from the Bible to him in his church, and 
prove to the rector that he has uncon- 
sciously learned to do what ordinary mor- 
tals attain only with repeated effort. The 
best sermon ever written is a failure if the 
people lose half the words of which it is 
composed. There is a technique to every 



THE PREPARATION 99 

profession as there is a technique to every 
art. The man who despises that technique 
is as great a fool as the farmer who believes 
the wheels of his wagon so well constructed 
that he refuses to grease them. The wise 
man respects every aid which will make 
the best that is within him effective in 
service to his neighbor. 

Joined closely to the training in the prep- 
aration and delivery of sermons and the 
conduct of divine worship, is what is com- 
monly called pastoral care. In one sense 
this can be learned only by experience. 
But the wise teacher may tell what he him- 
self has learned by experience in a parish. 
He may tell not only his successes but his 
failures. He may familiarize his pupils 
with the lives and guiding principles of 
great pastors. He may reveal the human 
soul in its need and perplexity, its sorrow 
and its moral failure, its recovery and its 
triumph. He may show how a man, set 
apart to the divine task, may help another 
man. There is much that no lips can 
teach; there is also much that can be im- 
parted. A certain amount of machinery 
must be in the life of the pastor; the move- 



100 THE MINISTRY 

ment of this machinery can be taught. 
The theological student will not despise this 
mechanical knowledge. Learning before- 
hand what can be taught by another, he 
will be the more apt and the more free to 
learn what only God can teach him when 
he comes face to face with the baffling 
mysteries of human life. 

If possible, a man, while In the theolog- 
ical school, should serve a little parish or 
mission in some capacity. He may not 
take much time from his studies; for study 
is now his chief duty. His ultimate useful- 
ness will be greater if only his Sundays are 
given to this practical service. He may 
teach in a Sunday-school; he may conduct 
divine worship ; he may either read another's 
sermons or, if permitted by authority, make 
his own addresses. In any case he will be 
coming in contact with people in some such 
fashion as he will meet them in his regular 
ministry; and so he will have a taste of 
what the work ahead is to be. The slight 
experience he can gain will open his mind 
towards the questions he may now ask 
his trusted instructors in the school. The 
work of the classroom will cease to be 



THE PREPARATION loi 

academic. He will begin to apply every- 
thing he learns to the needs which he has 
observed in his quasi parishioners. 

Such mission work has often been of dis- 
tinct advantage to a man. It has also at 
times been a man's undoing. Now and 
then a student feels that the parish or mis- 
sion he chances to serve is all in all, and the 
theological school is only a necessary nui- 
sance which conventional authorities require 
of him. He may become vain of his easy 
success. He may scorn hard work and de- 
cent preparation. He may give his eve- 
nings to pleasant visits, and so neglect his 
books; thus he may come to the day of his 
ordination with only superficial acquire- 
ment ; the foundation may be so weak that 
no solid structure can be built upon it. Be- 
cause of such discouraging folly, many a 
theological professor has warned all stu- 
dents to decline invitations to pastoral ex- 
periment while the theological course is 
unfinished. Their warnings are valid; un- 
less a man can prove to them that he can 
keep his academic work up to its best, while 
making his first timid efforts to put his 
learning into practice. Keeping in mind 



I02 THE MINISTRY 

the risks, and seeking to reduce them to a 
minimum, every student of theology will 
endeavor to yield himself to a course in the 
practical work of a pastor in some small 
parish or mission. There is distinct ad- 
vantage for his training in this early taste 
of what is to come. 

In addition to these fundamental courses 
in a theological school are a number of 
courses from which one may rightly choose 
the course or courses which most appeal to 
one's enthusiasm and ability. Sociology is 
fast becoming a science. A great deal can 
be learned from the master of sociology. 
Though the Christian ministry is first of 
all interested in the subjects of the king- 
dom, yet through advancing the character 
and power of these subjects it must build 
up the kingdom as a whole. It may have 
no ambitious dream that it can in some 
way contrive a wholesale method by which 
the kingdom shall grow; yet, little by little, 
without observation, the leaven will spread 
till the whole is leavened. The Church 
needs to know all that the master of sociol- 
ogy can teach; sometimes to sympathize 
and appropriate the teaching; sometimes to 



THE PREPARATION 103 

criticise it. Never let the social worker 
believe that the Christian pastor is not in- 
terested, and deeply interested, in the im- 
provement of the social organism. He is 
not content to see his poor parishioners 
ground down by unjust wages or by the 
tyranny of an unscrupulous union. He 
will fight in conjunction with every decent 
committee which pleads for liberty of chil- 
dren, when greedy employers or thoughtless 
parents would shut up their growing lives in 
cheap factories. But, while he is doing all 
this work for the mass of humanity he will 
know that his immediate duty must always 
be to John who is selfish, or to Mary who 
is oppressed, or to their child who is for- 
gotten. The golden age is coming only so 
far as the leaden people, by some heavenly 
alchemy, are being changed to gold — one 
by one. And that is the Christian miracle 
which the sociological pastor of Christ's 
Church is bidden to perform. 

Music is of importance in the Church. 
For the most part laymen will be respon- 
sible for it. But some clergymen ought to 
be proficient in the knowledge of the his- 
tory of music, that what is best in all music 



104 THE MINISTRY 

may be applied and adapted to the worship 
of the Church. As sociology should be co- 
ordinated with pastoral care, so music 
should be co-ordinated with the liturgical 
instinct of the Church. The clergyman 
need not be an organist or a choirmaster, 
but his knowledge how best to co-operate 
with an efficient organist and choirmaster 
will be of mutual advantage to the two 
men so co-operating, and to the Church 
as a whole. 

Whether or not a man is to be a teacher, 
the diligent student can scarcely fail to be 
interested in one of the departments of 
theological learning above all the rest. If 
he is curious about the difficult doctrines 
of the Church, let him take an advanced 
course on some specific truth such as the 
Atonement; or, if he longs to see more 
exactly into some period of history, let him 
take an advanced course, for instance, on 
the rise of Monasticism ; or, if he is im- 
pressed with the futility of Sunday-schools, 
let him seek a course on scientific pedagogy. 

More and more the theological school is 
varying its curriculum. To the fundamen- 
tal requirements it is adding an inviting 



THE PREPARATION 105 

array of elective courses from which the 
more eager spirits may test their capacity 
for original research. Thereby they have 
the chance to start upon some definite line 
of training; and then, being thus furnished, 
they may go on themselves to be creative 
leaders in a special field. Without neglect- 
ing the necessary duties of a clergyman, 
they will be authorities in certain depart- 
ments. The Church at large will look to 
them for counsel, for wisdom, for exact 
knowledge. 

So far from being a place where very dry 
professors teach very dry subjects, the 
modern theological school is a scene abound- 
ing in life. It is intent upon the truth as 
revealed to men down the ages in a con- 
tinuous stream of experience, as revealed to 
men in the movements of our own day, as 
revealed by the Holy Spirit to the devout 
individuals whom we know face to face. 
The modern theological school is seeking to 
know and to teach exactly the truth. But 
it is not content to keep the truth laid 
away in a napkin. The truth is to be 
carried out by its students into the life of 
the world. The truth is to be put to work. 



io6 THE MINISTRY 

It is not to be fought over, or to be gloried 
in, or to be hurled at the heretic. It is to 
be lived; and then it is to be so imparted 
that men will catch it, as children catch 
the measles, and they too will live it. For 
a university there is no better motto than 
Veritas ; for a theological school that motto 
is insufficient ; it must be Veritas et vita. If 
you have learned in the university to rev- 
erence truth, you will learn in the the- 
ological school to love it. You will desire 
to possess it, and then to transmit it as a 
living gift to the whole world. 



IN ALL EXPERIENCE 

Many valued clergymen have not been 
prepared for the ministry in a conventional 
way. They have started out to be business 
men, or lawyers, or physicians, or teachers, 
and then, at some stage in their preparation, 
or in some early stage of their active life, 
they have discovered that they were meant 
for the Christian ministry. Obviously they 
will not be expected to return to their early 
boyhood and begin again. With mature 



THE PREPARATION 107 

minds they will add to what mental and 
spiritual possessions they now have the 
knowledge which the Church may see fit to 
demand of them as a requisite for ordina- 
tion. Often these men of irregular prepara- 
tion outstrip in usefulness those of us who 
have had a normal schooling for our work. 
Several principles become clear as we re- 
flect upon this interesting phenomenon. 

In the first place, character is so emi- 
nently the qualification of an effective minis- 
try that it is comparatively indifferent how 
that character is won. If a man cares so 
earnestly for exact knowledge and for his 
fellow men that he is willing to go through 
the difficult training of a medical school and 
the additional training of a hospital, he has 
the same qualities of industry and love to 
bring to the work of the ministry. If a 
man looks upon the law as the expression of 
justice and if he longs to know and practise 
it that he may bring justice to the tangled 
and crooked ways of humanity, rescuing the 
oppressed and branding the oppressor, he 
has equally valuable traits to bring to the 
Christian ministry. If a man has been 
scrupulous in business and sees that wealth 



io8 THE MINISTRY 

is only for the service of the world and 
knows that money is a possible symbol of 
a man's interest and conscience, then he 
can bring to the ministry the high integrity 
which not only means to be honest but is 
honest, which not only means to use every 
gift of the people to its utmost worth, but, 
by his economic knowledge, does so use it. 
If a man has experienced the joy of teach- 
ing, if he has discovered that he has the 
precious gift of getting ideas into the minds 
of youth so that they both understand and 
own them, if he finds that he desires to teach 
not only truth but living truth and so comes 
into the ministry, then every day of his 
teaching has accumulated power which now 
he is able to pour into his preaching and 
into every instruction and into every con- 
versation, however informal, whereby he is 
able to win man after man, woman after 
woman, child after child, to the shining 
truth in the face of Jesus Christ. His 
character as a sound teacher is used to the 
inestimable benefit of the ministry. 

A further principle is that the man trained 
from without the specific institutions pro- 
vided by the Church, often brings into the 



THE PREPARATION 109 

ministry as a whole what the conventional 
parson never could bring to It. There are 
professional duties which every clergyman 
must do in the most careful way possible 
for him. But a good many clergymen do 
these professional duties in a professional 
way; they become so familiar that they be- 
come perfunctory. There is often a fresh- 
ness about the ministrations of a man who 
is not steeped in the theological atmosphere 
which brings to the congregation a sense of 
reality which is almost thrilling. Phillips 
Brooks once said to theological students, 
''Never get used to funerals.'* The law- 
yers, physicians, and teachers who come 
into the ministry show us what it is for a 
mature man to minister for the first time 
in the tenderest relations of pastor and peo- 
ple. They make us ask ourselves whether 
we may not have become too ''used to 
funerals'' and other sacred moments of our 
ministry. 

Still a third principle coming out of this 
consideration is that there is no knowledge 
thoroughly acquired, no deed carefully done, 
which does not contribute to the eflficiency 
of the ministry. If one has planted a field, 



no THE MINISTRY 

or tended sheep, or sailed a ship, or felled a 
tree, or built a house, or set the type of a 
book, one has in that experience a delicate 
tool wherewith to touch the sympathy and 
the affection of some man whom one de- 
sires with all one's heart and mind to reach. 
Not through the use of an illustration, not 
through the definite terms of a conversa- 
tion about farming, or grazing, or naviga- 
tion, or forestry, or carpentry, or printing, 
IS this sympathy and love kindled; but 
through that more delicate understanding 
which is created by the brotherhood of 
those bound to the same craft. The Su- 
preme Example of the ministry was a car- 
penter. Who may say how subtly that fact 
subconsciously affected the simple folk to 
whom He spoke His words of life? The 
ministry, of all vocations, most graciously 
uses all that a man has acquired. All life 
is part of its preparation, so far as a man 
may win its experience. 

A necessary warning must be added. 
The knowledge must be real knowledge, 
whether gained by study or by experience; 
it may not be superficial or untested. The 
late Thomas March Clark, one of the most 



THE PREPARATION in 

versatile and clever of men, relates that 
once when he was in London he thought to 
gain the attention of a congregation of dock 
laborers by illustrating his address with 
figures taken from ships and the sea. He 
made mistakes in terms, and immediately 
his hearers turned aside from all his teach- 
ing, because they knew that he was super- 
ficial and ignorant in their special depart- 
ment of knowledge. In ways less direct 
the expert detects and despises the ama- 
teur. If the ministry is to be helped by 
men from other walks in life these men 
must bring genuine experience, and there- 
fore exact knowledge. Then their contri- 
bution will be real, and their own ministry 
will be rich. 



VI 

THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 

The general opportunity of one who en- 
ters the Christian ministry is to proclaim 
God's love for men and to bring men, so 
far as one can, into a worthy response to 
that divine friendship. This means that 
one must be not only religious, but actively 
religious. The ministry offers to a religious 
man the inestimable privilege of spending 
every hour of the day in the furtherance of 
true religion. The ways in which this 
general purpose may be accomplished are 
varied. As varied types of men may find 
in the ministry full scope for their particu- 
lar traits, so varied tasks await men who 
have especial aptitude for this or that func- 
tion of the ministry. It is well that a man 
see clearly, that he may work out the gen- 
eral and essential purpose of his vocation 
in somewhat narrow limits which bound a 
field where his toil will be intensely con- 
genial. 

112 



THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 113 



PREACHER AND PASTOR 

Almost every man who goes into the 
ministry expects to be the shepherd of a 
flock; that is, to have charge of a parish. 
In large parishes some of the clergy will 
emphasize the preaching; and others will 
give most of their time to the care of indi- 
viduals in some form of pastoral relation- 
ship. But, even in this large field, where 
to a certain extent men will be specialists, 
the preacher will also, just in so far as his 
preaching is effective, be forced to be a 
pastor to those whom he has helped by his 
preaching; and the man who has helped 
people privately and personally will be 
pleaded with to utter his message in the 
pulpit. Of course in the average parishes 
over the broad land the office of preacher 
and the office of pastor must be combined. 
Whether necessity combine them or not, 
they ought to be combined. The greatest 
preacher whom our country has known de- 
clared that, if he could, he would drop 
everything but the pastoral duties of his 



114 THE MINISTRY 

ministry; evidently not only did he feel 
himself most serviceable when he acted as 
pastor, but the inspiration of his whole 
ministry was kindled by that experience. 
We may believe that the searching qualities 
of his preaching came from the revelations 
which God gave him in his pastoral min- 
istrations. Above all, the Master who 
preached the Sermon on the Mount claimed 
for Himself the title, the Good Shepherd. 

A man looking forward to the ministry 
has a right to ask what would be expected 
of him if he should give himself to the paro- 
chial work of the Church. No explanation 
is adequate; as one cannot describe music, 
so one cannot describe the experience of a 
preacher and pastor. Only the man who 
has experienced the response which honest 
preaching and faithful shepherding receive, 
can know what it is to be either preacher 
or pastor. 

To preach is supremely hard. Because 
it makes severe demands upon a man's 
industry and a man's daily life, a man may 
rightly suspect that it is worth doing. The 
facile people who tell a story, quote a 
poem, and utter a few platitudes are not 



THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 115 

preachers, however they may satisfy the pa- 
tient congregation. Real preaching comes 
up out of genuine study of God's ways in 
the Bible, in history, in the daily paper, in 
one's own experience, in the lives of one's 
flock; and one will not fear dulness if one * 
may tell the truth. The dulness will be 
transfigured as the congregation see in the 
preacher's words the vision of what God is 
revealing to their own inner sight. No 
clever books of illustrations, no commen- 
taries framed for preachers, no pithy sum- 
maries, will suffice. There must be study 
of God's Word, study of men's thoughts, 
study of human life at our doors. Men to 
preach must work with all their might. 

The preachers who move men assure us 
that their task never becomes easy. ''I 
sweat blood every time I preach," was the 
testimony of a modern preacher. And an- 
other has said, '* After each sermon I think 
I never can preach again." These wit- 
nesses to the difficulty of preaching ought 
to stimulate us, not discourage us. The 
work of preaching is so hard that it inspires 
respect. A task worthy of all the capacity 
of a man, actually and potentially, is a 



ii6 THE MINISTRY 

task which a sturdy and venturesome man 
will desire to undertake. It calls upon him 
for all that is best in him; it will keep him 
at his best. 

Moreover, no preacher who is worthy of 
the name will have any other judge before 
the eyes of his imagination than the Lord 
God. A sane man will have due reverence 
for the word which God speaks to devout 
laymen in his parish. He will not be so 
self-centred as to believe that God reveals 
His truth exclusively to him. But when, 
after due consideration, he is sure that the 
truth which God has told him is certainly 
the whole truth and nothing but the truth, 
then he is bound to declare it whatever the 
unfavorable reaction of the congregation 
for the time being. In the long run no hon- 
orable congregation really desires to listen 
to a preacher who consults their prejudices, 
or preconceptions, or inadequate reason- 
ings. A layman of robust faith knows 
how little of the truth filters through the 
mind of a single child of God; he knows 
that his experience must be supplemented 
by that of others; and when the preacher 
who tries to know the experience of many 



THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 117 

souls with whom he has fairly intimate 
association, tells what he has discovered, 
the layman expects him to say more than 
will be the mere reflection of his individual 
experience. If a preacher is the shepherd 
of his flock, if he is known to them as an 
honest man striving to obey God and God 
only, he receives surprising trust from his 
congregation. The opportunities for mar- 
tyrdom are not so numerous as the enthusi- 
ast often desires. Good men, after all, 
want a leader more than a reflector. They 
will shake their heads and disagree time 
and again. And they have a right to their 
private judgment; for often they know 
more, and have lived more deeply, than the 
preacher. But they would not darken his 
counsel with their own limited knowledge. 
They want him to speak out boldly the 
truth as he believes that he has received it 
from God. 

Here again is alluring inducement to be 
a preacher. The sneering comment of 
some that Christian preachers say only 
what they are paid to say, dies on lying 
lips. To stand up with the consciousness 
that one is saying in one's heart the prefa- 



ii8 THE MINISTRY 

tory words, ''Thus saith the Lord,'* sug- 
gests a startling responsibility for modesty, 
respect for others' convictions, and confi- 
dence towards God; and it gives a man at 
least a glimpse of what it is to be called to 
preach the Gospel. No king, no ruler of 
any sort, has so high a function as he. 

With the office of preacher is wrapped 
up the office of pastor. The two offices 
cannot be separated. The preaching will 
be interpreted and understood according as 
the man in the pew knows his dear friend 
who stands in the pulpit. For he does not 
know him chiefly in the pulpit. It was this 
preacher who came to him when his child 
was at the point of death; he prayed the 
prayers the poor anxious parents had not 
courage to pray. It was this preacher who 
went out to find the wayward boy, ex- 
plained the love of the father and the moth- 
er, and brought him home to their arms. 
It was this preacher who stayed the flagging 
spirits of the father of the house when he 
was called upon to pass through a galling 
fire of criticism, till his righteousness was 
made clear to the enemy. It was this 
preacher who came in the black hour of 



THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 119 

bereavement, and by word and prayer 
brought into the darkness the Everlast- 
ing Light. The stranger marvels because 
this man's sermons are heard with a hush 
upon the whole congregation. The stranger 
little knows the excellent living quality 
which vibrates through all the simple sen- 
tences. The sheep belong to the shepherd: 
he knows his sheep and calls them by name. 
And the sheep know the shepherd's voice: 
they look up and they are fed. 

I once heard an English vicar complain 
that, though many people in the bounds of 
his parish did not come to his parish church, 
these same absentees expected him to bap- 
tize their children and to bury their dead, 
and he wished to be rid of them. It was 
the strange illustration of the conventional 
hardness which may spring up in a State 
Church. I believe that this lament is not 
characteristic of the English Church; but, 
in any case, one sees here the sign that a 
man with a noble privilege may fall under 
Christ's awful indictment : he is a thief and 
no shepherd. The Good Shepherd is al- 
ways going out for the one lost sheep, leav- 
ing, if need be, the ninety-and-nine which 



120 THE MINISTRY 

are safe. The pastor whose preaching is 
the preaching of the Good Shepherd makes 
clear his longing to serve just as many souls 
as shall turn to him, whatever the emer- 
gency, however long their neglect of him 
and his ministrations. 

If a man becomes a real pastor in his 
community, his church will not hold all 
the people he visits, if by some miracle 
they all bethink them to come to divine 
service on a given Sunday morning. Some 
of these may be children of devout church- 
goers; they complain that they went to 
church too often in their youth, or they 
must take their own children to the coun- 
try, or churchgoing doesn't help them. 
Yet the pastor counts them of his flock. 
He remembers that subconsciously the rev- 
erence of their parents is in them; the time 
will come when the world will not satisfy. 
He knows that sickness, failure, sorrow 
will certainly visit them; and they will in 
agony cry out to God. Even if they deem 
a clergyman, and church, and baptisms 
and funerals outworn conventions, they 
will desire respect and order for their be- 
loved. If one comes in the bitter hour 



THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 121 

who Is a stranger, there is risk that the 
comfort will fall short. If one comes who 
is known to them as a faithful pastor, 
perhaps even a friend, his words will be 
weighted with the simple conviction that 
they are not perfunctory, but are spoken 
by one who truly cares. The strayed sheep 
knows the voice of the good shepherd. He 
is no stranger. They look up and are fed. 
Then there are the reliable parishioners 
in every parish who may be called the saints. 
The pastor knows that they are better than 
himself; he sits at their feet to learn. What 
need, he says to himself, have they of him ? 
A pastor has a duty to these; he stands in 
an official relationship. He is not simply 
himself; he is the embodiment of all the 
pastors whom the parish has had. In some 
way he is permitted to bring within himself, 
if he be loyal and self-forgetting, the pres- 
ence of the Good Shepherd, the Master of 
us all. He may tell of the work the parish 
and the Church at large are trying to do. 
Questions may be asked about parochial 
administration which cannot be answered 
in sermon or in year-book or in parish 
paper. To know that the pastor, old or 



122 THE MINISTRY 

young, does not forget, that he longs to 
serve, that he has imagination to suspect 
loneliness, that he is glad to bring the 
Church to the parishioner, is to that faith- 
ful parishioner the assurance that the par- 
ish has personality and life. He will fre- 
quently provide opportunity that, when his 
parishioners would lift up their hearts, they 
may join him in the great Feast of the 
Lord's Supper, there to receive anew the 
conscious reality of a fellowship which binds 
them together in the living Christ. And, 
when by reason of age or infirmity, a par- 
ishioner cannot come to church, the pastor 
will administer the Sacrament in the home, 
that the pledges of God's love may reach 
the feeblest and the most unfortunate. 
Many a sick-room becomes glorious in the 
depth of the devotion of the two or three 
people gathered there: their hearts burn 
within them, their eyes are opened, and 
Christ is known of them in the breaking of 
the bread. 

Nor is the relationship of a good shep- 
herd to a flock more advantageous to the 
flock than to the pastor himself. When a 
rector had resigned one parish and had come 



THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 123 

to another, he was visited by an attractive 
young college graduate who had an impor- 
tant position on a great daily newspaper. 
The journalist said: ** Aren't you lonely? 
Fve been here a year in this cold New Eng- 
land city, and I haven't a friend." The 
clergyman replied: '^IVe been in this warm- 
hearted New England city less than a week, 
and my friends are so many that I can't 
count them. My parishioners had an old 
rector who was here for twenty-seven years. 
They loved him as their dear friend. They 
are good enough to begin with me where 
they left off with him. They take me for 
granted." 

No words can quite tell what the rela- 
tionship of a pastor is to his congregation. 
It is, at its best, something more than the 
relationship of friend to friend. There is 
ownership in it. It is akin to blood rela- 
tionship. If the pastor is old, like Doctor 
Lavender in Mrs. Deland's stories, he is as 
a father. If he is young, like the Dominie 
of Drumtochty, and the parishioner is old, 
he is like a son. If he is approximately the 
same age as the parishioner, he is as a 
brother, to protect one, to help one, to 



124 THE MINISTRY 

share the burden as it falls. To little chil- 
dren he may stand with their parents as 
one of the guardians and lovers of their un- 
folding life. 

The ideal is always far ahead of the 
preacher and pastor. He is never properly 
satisfied with his work. But he knows that 
it is worth all the energy and devotion he 
can put into it. And he knows that the 
joy of it is beyond all reckoning. 

II 

A TEACHER OF THEOLOGY 

Long ago theological teachers in our 
schools were elected by benevolent laymen 
who sought for their beloved pastors some 
less strenuous career as they failed in 
strength. But now for many years our 
theological schools have been taught by 
men who have not been thus amiably 
chosen for the sake of the professors; they 
are taught by men who have been defi- 
nitely trained for the chairs to which they 
have been called. Occasionally men from 
parochial life with scholarly tastes have be- 
come teachers in our seminaries. But the 



THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 125 

best men, as a rule, have been the teachers 
who from their own student days have de- 
termined to fit themselves to teach theology. 
Perhaps they have gone abroad to study in 
Oxford, Cambridge, Gottingen, or Berlin. 
Certainly they have kept up hard reading 
In their own chosen fields. The schools 
from which they have come have watched 
them while In some parochial experience 
they have sought contact with human life, 
and have summoned them at the first op- 
portunity to the teaching force of the 
schools. There Is place In the ministry 
for the man who is not moved to be a 
preacher or a pastor, but who wishes to in- 
vestigate the foundations upon which our 
reasonable religious convictions rest and to 
Impart the confidence which he acquires to 
others. The need for such a man Is more 
evident to-day than ever before. When all 
branches of learning seek more thoroughly 
equipped teachers, theology shall not be re- 
moved from Its place in the front lines. 

The approach to theological learning is 
clear. In college or In the theological 
school the student may find himself grow- 
ing more and more interested In one de- 



126 THE MINISTRY 

partment or another. He may have the 
philosophic mind, whereby he may find his 
approach through the problems of theology. 
He may have the human instinct by which 
he recognizes that in no nation or peo- 
ple has God left himself without witness. 
Thereby he would approach his problem 
through a life study of comparative relig- 
ions. He may have that combination of 
reverence and critical freedom by which he 
will desire to spend his life upon the knowl- 
edge and interpretation of the Old Testa- 
ment or of the New. Still again, he may 
be so absorbed in the study of Church his- 
tory that he will seek to penetrate to all the 
knowledge which the sources can give him, 
and then he will desire to study the inter- 
pretation which historians have made to 
the well-attested facts. 

The student, convinced that he wishes to 
be a teacher, may feel no compulsion at the 
beginning of his course to select his depart- 
ment. That will come with a growing 
knowledge of what the various possibilities 
contain. A teacher of great learning and 
magnetism may inspire him. This teacher 
may become his master. Naturally his de- 



THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 127 

partment will seem to him vastly impor- 
tant. Or, he may have native gifts which 
the faculty of the school will decide amount 
to genius; and the whole faculty will urge 
him to give himself to the cultivation of 
those gifts. 

Besides teaching, the man who becomes 
an expert in any branch of theological 
learning has the obligation laid upon him 
to write books. Our theological schools 
should be more amply manned, so that the 
professors should not find their strength 
completely used in the classroom. They 
should have leisure not only for indepen- 
dent research but for making, through 
books, permanent contributions to theo- 
logical learning. Too long America has 
depended upon English and other foreign 
scholars for its books of theology; or at 
least for too large a proportion of them. 
Each nation has qualities which make a 
medium for theological thought. Through 
this national medium, American theologians 
ought to be speaking to American scholars, 
and to other American people who, though 
not scholars, are thoughtful and willing to 
learn. The man who writes a book with 



128 THE MINISTRY 

the individual reader in mind, who aims to 
clarify and enlarge his thought and to en- 
lighten his life, is close to the Good Shep- 
herd who is seeking the sheep gone astray. 

Just what department the enthusiast shall 
ultimately select is at first indifferent. The 
general foundation for the teacher must be 
laid broadly. He would wisely not begin 
to specialize too early. A teacher of the- 
ology must know the details of biblical 
criticism and interpretation. The teacher 
of Church history must know the terms and 
principles of philosophy, as history reveals 
the succession of theories and systems. 
The teacher who would interpret the his- 
tory of the Church must know well the his- 
tory of secular institutions and movements. 
Every branch of learning suffers from a too 
early and complete specialization; but prob- 
ably no branch of learning suffers so much 
as theological investigation. That which 
brings truth into human relationships must 
touch human thought and human life at 
just as many points as possible. As God 
touches life at every point, so to know God 
we must be conscious of the boundless life 
which is His. 



THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 129 
III 

A MASTER IN A CHURCH SCHOOL FOR BOYS 

There are other specific functions that 
the ministry might cultivate, as institutions 
multiply which need in certain posts men 
who are not only trained in the specific sub- 
ject for which each institution stands, but 
are also trained in the duties of the Chris- 
tian ministry. 

In America, as in England, we know the 
value of a fully equipped clergyman at the 
head of a Church boarding-school (called 
in England a public school), and we know 
that there is great gain if some of the assis- 
tant masters also are clergymen. These 
schools have proved so potent in training 
robust and honorable manhood, that they 
will certainly be multiplied in the next few 
years. Thus far in this country too few 
of these schools have been sufficiently en- 
dowed; so that with rare exceptions, only 
the well-to-do can send their sons to them. 
Generous benefactors will doubtless make 
it possible for fees so to be reduced that 
able professional men (and other cultivated 



130 THE MINISTRY 

people) with narrow incomes can send their 
boys to the best schools in the country. 
This means a significant opportunity for in- 
tensive training in the ministry, whereby 
we may look for distinguished schoolmas- 
ters who are also clergymen. 

How high this specific vocation within 
the ministry may and does become, one 
sees from these words which, in one of his 
books, Mr. Wells puts into the mouth of a 
schoolmaster: 

I have had dull boys and intractable boys, 
but nearly all have gone into the world gen- 
tlemen, broad-minded, good-mannered, under- 
standing and unselfish, masters of self, servants 
of man, because the whole scheme of their 
education has been to release them from base 
and narrow things. 

The earnest schoolmaster is always close 
to the ideals of the ministry. We find a 
fruitful life when the ideals of the two pro- 
fessions are fused in one man. 

We are beginning, in America, to have 
choristers' schools connected with the foun- 
dations of a few great parishes and one or 
two cathedrals. Occasionally a man with 



THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 131 

ability in music is drawn towards the min- 
istry, but he is not sure that he could still 
use music as an avocation while being first 
of all a minister. It is quite likely that 
there will be an increasing demand for such 
enthusiasts in the ranks of the ministry, 
as existing choristers' schools expand and 
others are established. If it is desirable 
that the headmaster of a school like Groton, 
St. Paul's, or St. Marks be an executive 
clergyman, it may be that a headmaster 
who has the instinct of a pastor and such 
knowledge of music that he will Intelli- 
gently co-operate with the organist and 
choirmaster, will be sought for our best 
schools for choristers. But such a man 
cannot be chosen in any haphazard fashion ; 
he must be a man first with the requisite 
enthusiasm, and then with the patience to 
equip himself for this difficult combination 
of duties. 

IV 

AN EXPERT IN SOCIAL AMELIORATION 

As youth feels the possibility of improv- 
ing social conditions, youth will desire to 
make the Church a servant to the oppressed 



132 THE MINISTRY 

and forlorn. As the work of the Church 
grows more complex, the Church will desire 
to have within its ministry experts who can 
wisely and efficiently make the Church a 
servant to the many. There is room to- 
day for the expert in social amelioration in 
the leadership of the Church. 

In times of change and unrest two dan- 
gerous classes manifest themselves in the 
Church; the radical who talks wildly and 
with insufficient knowledge; and the selfish 
conservative who pleads that the old order 
be maintained at least till he dies. The 
clergyman who has merely a sympathetic 
interest in philanthropic problems is not 
sufficiently furnished with knowledge and 
experience to guide two such opposing 
groups as these. Laymen, of course, could 
do much to relieve the pressure. But in a 
department of the Church likely to become 
so compelling as this, there must also be 
leadership from the ministry which can in 
some gracious way relate this seemingly 
secular problem with the larger and more 
comprehensive plan of God's leadership of 
men through history, as patient men have 
been able to discover it. There must be 



THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 133 

at least some clergymen who will know 
enough as experts to be respected both 
within and without the Church. 

Foreign peoples coming in large numbers 
to our shores often throw aside the religious 
sanctions which conventionally surrounded 
them in their old home. The Church in 
America in one or more of its Communions 
iinds itself confronted with an insistent de- 
mand to serve this drifting multitude. To 
recognize valuable traits in the old life, to 
discern undesirable elements, to prepare 
both the new and the old neighbors for 
assimilation and fusion into a stronger 
American character — all this requires skill. 
Patient workers in our huge cities are gain- 
ing from experience a fund of knowledge 
which should not be locked up in one time 
or in one vicinity, but should be communi- 
cated to all others who are interested, that 
when the experts of this generation lay 
down their work, nothing be lost and a 
real advance be made. 

There is too much that is academic in 
all our social theories. The vital teaching 
must come from the intelligent workers 
among the people who have both minds 



134 THE MINISTRY 

and hearts to interpret their years of ser- 
vice among the poor and among those who, 
out of a strange land, are finding their place 
in our American Republic, and in our na- 
tional Christianity. The theological stu- 
dent whose bent seems to be some form of 
sociology, will find that the Church has a 
welcome for his specific gifts. He will need 
courage with his sanity, and he will need 
sanity with his courage. He must know 
how to build up rather than tear down. He 
must bring God's children together rather 
than dig gulfs between them. He must add 
to his zeal patience, and to his patience love. 
Then he will be a prophet of the new social 
day, and all Christ's people will rejoice in 
him. He will even discover that the formal 
and indispensable outward acts of the 
Church express a social unity which is 
amazing. First, there is the submission of 
all classes of people to the cleansing and 
spiritualizing act of Baptism, whereby all 
are made members of one body; and then 
there is the daring simplicity of the supreme 
service of the Church, the Lord's Supper, 
whereby worship becomes an act of obedi- 
ence rather than a difficult intellectual 



THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 135 

effort, and the high and the low, the wise 
and the untaught, equally and together re- 
ceive the elemental symbols instituted by 
Christ, and by faith are, through them, 
bound into a unity which claims Him as the 
heart and soul, living and breathing through 
all their humanity. 



AN ADMINISTRATOR 

In the Apostolic Church, the Apostles 
found themselves st) far impeded in their 
original work by certain tasks of administra- 
tion that seven men were appointed to re- 
lieve them. The Church to-day is tending 
to create an order of administrators who 
will relieve the pastors, preachers, and 
teachers of the larger business problems of 
the Church. There is a tendency to ap- 
point many secretaries for Christian educa- 
tion, social service, and missionary work. 
At present the Church is more or less ham- 
pered by the lack of training in the many 
excellent men who are called to such posi- 
tions. Ordinarily the man who begins with 
a fund of sound common sense and devotion 



136 THE MINISTRY 

is obliged to learn the details of his office by 
a tedious and expensive experience. 

Because some offices of administration 
have attached to them considerable honor, 
a student might naturally hesitate to an- 
nounce that he is setting out to be an ad- 
ministrator. But shyness of this com- 
mendable sort is not to be considered when 
the Church can point to administrator after 
administrator in its government who has ob- 
viously no gifts of administration and is too 
old or too complacent to learn them. Men 
who attempt to preside at meetings of busy 
men, often by irrelevant stories and scatter- 
ing comments so dissipate interest and so 
waste time that the trained business man 
despises the practical training which the 
Church gives its leaders. 

If any man desires to be an administrator 
he desires a post of usefulness in the Church. 
Whether his training bring him to conspicu- 
ous place or keep him tied to some obscure 
office, he may rejoice in the genuine service 
which he gives to Christian efficiency, and 
he may set free for preaching and teaching 
others in the ministry whose abundant gifts 
may then express themselves in the best 



THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY 137 

utterance and the best books of which they 
are capable. 

I spoke in a former chapter* of the prac- 
tical man who would like to come into the 
ministry, but who fears that his tempera- 
ment and ability are too prosaic. The 
Church needs him. The laymen might ask 
why a clergyman need be tangled in any 
administration whatever. Passing by all 
theories, we may observe that all through 
the history of the Church the clergy have 
been forced to exercise administration. 
The laity may in the future, to the benefit 
of the Church, take a much larger share in 
administration ; but the clergy will probably 
always be required to do a considerable 
portion of the administrative ecclesiastical 
offices. The clergyman who is thoroughly 
trained to administration knows how to 
use others advantageously for his own re- 
lief and for the higher efficiency of the 
work. The practical man may take cour- 
age and joyfully enter the ministry. 

* Page 48. 



138 THE MINISTRY 

VI 

HOW TO FIND one's PLACE 

How then shall one find one's place? 
The only caution necessary is not to worry. 
God, through a man's own enthusiasm and 
the special need revealed, will show His 
will for His servant. The one word of 
positive counsel necessary is to be confi- 
dent. The particular task which a man 
most desires to do is waiting for him within 
the variety and happiness of the Christian 
ministry. 



VII 

THE NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 

A MAN Wishing to make his Hfe useful 
naturally asks if the profession which he is 
inclined to examine fills a genuine need in 
the life of his time. There is always a 
group here or there to contend that though 
there has been need of a specific class in 
the past, that need is no longer imperative. 
The Christian Scientist believes that the 
time for a physician is over. The Quaker 
would have the world get on without an 
ordained ministry. The anarchist strives 
to eliminate the professional legislator. 
Others believe higher education a menace 
to the life of the Spirit. Still others believe 
the professional lawyer a menace to the 
simple justice which in their enthusiasm 
they believe men unhampered by theories 
would attain. 

That the ministry and the visible Church 
139 



140 THE MINISTRY 

seem to certain critics outworn is not 
strange. These critics may be among the 
careless and indifferent; or they may be 
among the most earnest and devoted church- 
goers of our day. They may say that the 
ministry and the Church have not failed; 
they have succeeded only too well. They 
recall that in their youth religion was iso- 
lated; they found it in church on Sunday 
morning, or in a religious journal. Now 
they hear religious topics discussed in clubs, 
at dinners, in the military camp; they find 
in almost every magazine and weekly jour- 
nal sober and intelligent reflection upon 
religious and theological problems — and the 
people not only themselves read the arti- 
cles, but urge others to read them. These 
readers, say the critics, are the symbol of 
the penetration of the Church into all de- 
partments of life, whereby the Church as a 
separate institution becomes unnecessary. 
The critics hope that the Church will last 
through their day; for they find it singularly 
comforting when depressed, exceptionally 
stimulating when hard tasks loom ahead of 
them, infinitely consoling in sorrow. 

Obviously no one would care to enter a 



NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 141 

profession which was about to vanish from 
men's necessity. But these outside critics 
have insufficient evidence that the ministry 
is less needed to-day than in the past. No 
one can tell what the need of the ministry 
is except the man, who being in the minis- 
try, knows at first-hand what demands are 
made upon him. If he lives a life of lei- 
sure, with only himself to consider, very 
likely the world is about done with the 
ministry of his kind. But the typical repre- 
sentative of the ministry to-day has, as a 
plain matter of fact, so many demands 
upon him that he can do each day only 
part of the tasks which individuals or 
organizations, in a community or in a wider 
sphere, implore him to undertake. He goes 
to bed worried, not because he has worked 
hard, but because with all his activity he 
has accomplished only a fraction of the 
duties his willing mind, heart, and hands 
were appointed to do. 

This typical representative of the minis- 
try lives not only in great cities, but in 
small towns, and in the open country. 
The place where a man lives has little to 
do with the fulness of his time. If he has 



142 THE MINISTRY 

ordinary ability, some vision, and a con- 
science, he will see anywhere more that 
ought to be done than his constant labor 
can perform. Of course the personal quali- 
ties of a man have a good deal to do with 
the requests which come to him for service. 
But a large part of the demand centres in 
the primary knowledge that he represents 
the Christian ministry; he is known to be 
a man who is set apart gladly to serve indi- 
viduals and causes chancing to be in need 
of help. That he happens to be an agreea- 
ble, level-headed, and energetic person illu- 
mines his office; but a layman with the 
same qualities would not be in equal de- 
mand. The man known by the community 
to be at their service for any help he can 
give is bound to have a place which no one 
else can fill. 

What then are the uses of the Christian 
ministry which are quite as insistently 
necessary now as in any of the last nine- 
teen centuries? 



NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 143 



IN THE COMMUNITY 

James Russell Lowell once wrote: 

The worst kind of religion is no religion at 
all, and these men, living in ease and luxury, 
indulging themselves in the amusement of go- 
ing without a religion, may be thankful that 
they live in lands where the Gospel they neglect 
has tamed the beastliness and ferocity of the 
men who, but for Christianity, might long ago 
have eaten their carcasses like the South Sea 
Islanders, or cut off their heads, and tanned 
their hides, like the monsters of the French 
Revolution. When the microscopic search of 
scepticism, which has hunted the heavens and 
sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a 
Creator, has turned its attention to human 
society, and has found a place on this planet 
ten miles square where a man may live in de- 
cency, comfort, and security, supporting and 
educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted 
— a place where age is reverenced, infancy re- 
spected, manhood respected, womanhood hon- 
ored, and human life held in due regard, — 
when sceptics can find such a place ten miles 
square on this globe, where the Gospel has not 



144 THE MINISTRY 

gone, and cleared the way and laid the founda- 
tions and made decency and security possible, 
it will then be in order for the sceptical literati 
to move thither and ventilate their views. So 
long as these men are dependent upon the re- 
ligion which they disregard for every privilege 
they enjoy, they may well hesitate a little before 
they seek to rob the Christian of his hope, and 
humanity of faith in that Saviour who alone has 
given to man that hope of life eternal which 
makes life tolerable and society possible, and 
robs death of its terrors and the grave of its 
gloom. 

This eloquent passage describes what many 
men would be glad to say if they could. In 
general no one would care to live in a com- 
munity where the ministry was not func- 
tioning. Let us see in some detail what are 
the ministerial duties which every normal 
community counts necessary for its life. 

The public worship of God affects many 
more than those who regularly share in it. 
Indeed it may be said to affect even those 
who never are seen inside a church door. 
To have some people who periodically join 
in public praise, in public prayer, and in 
listening to public religious instruction is 



NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 145 

to give to any community a certain tone. 
People made conscious of God's presence, 
and then living through the week, con- 
sciously or subconsciously, in that presence, 
are as leaven. They communicate what 
they have received in ways which cannot 
be analyzed or described. They are the 
salt, the seasoning, of the community. 
They may or may not be the most con- 
spicuous leaders of the community. The 
general tone of the community always de- 
pends upon them. Non-churchgoers recog- 
nize it when they tell their children that 
they wish them to go to Sunday-school or 
to church. Wise mill-owners like to have 
churches near their mills, not because it 
makes the operatives content with unfair 
conditions or inadequate wages, but be- 
cause the operatives become better people, 
do better work, and make the whole neigh- 
borhood a better neighborhood. The tragic 
comedy of life is revealed when a man sees 
that public worship helps others and him- 
self neglects its opportunity. But his testi- 
mony is clear nevertheless. Probably few 
towns in a country nominally Christian 
have ever been founded where the founders 



146 THE MINISTRY 

(however irreligious) have not planned to 
have at least one church with its regular 
worship. 

The conduct of public worship Is only 
one of the functions of the ministry which 
the community finds practically necessary 
to its efficient being. More and more so- 
cial classes are evident. They no longer 
fret us when they mean certain distinctions 
in what we call social amenities. Because 
some people are considered eligible for this 
or that interesting home or club, does not 
bar the others from happiness. There are 
natural groups in every community where 
people find congenial companionship, and 
there is little to be gained by shuffling these 
groups together to make awkward situa- 
tions. But every community dreads lack 
of sympathy and co-operation in the vari- 
ous social strata of its life. When the 
people who work with their hands draw 
aside and send out ugly suspicions against 
those who work with their brains ; or, when 
the people with much money fling angry 
words against the demands of those who 
have little; or when the people south of a 
given street show petty contempt for those 



NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 147 

who live north of it — then those who care 
for the community have cause for mis- 
giving. The community is flimsy because 
it has divided intentions and divided affec- 
tions. 

There is only one profession or class in 
the community that can weld together 
these diverse elements. That profession 
or class is the Christian ministry. The 
ministry is pledged, by its Galilean King, 
at once the simplest and the most august of 
leaders, to be a member of every class. It 
enters every home with a sense of comrade- 
ship, ownership, almost relationship. It is 
unembarrassed in a palace, it finds no lack 
of welcome in the tiniest hut. In so far as 
the people feel their possession in the repre- 
sentative of the ministry, they possess one 
another. In times of suspicion, recrimina- 
tion, hate, is it not a high and necessary 
function that one profession should give 
itself to such amalgamating power, that 
the community should be, at least approxi- 
mately, a mutually loving family? 

When a house is known to be in distress, 
the neighbor sometimes fears to be accused 
of intrusion if a call is made and leading 



148 THE MINISTRY 

questions are asked, most of all if help is 
volunteered. The solicitous neighbor comes 
to whisper his knowledge to one who repre- 
sents the ministry in the town. He, it is 
felt, can without offense, with every assur- 
ance of success play the friend in that luck- 
less household. By such an example we 
see that a normal community demands that 
its friendship be made so thorough that 
there be a profession within it devoted to 
the exercise of friendship. The ministry 
itself sometimes smiles at what it thinks 
the futility of pastoral calls. It speaks of 
leaving cards, and drinking tea, and wast- 
ing time. The community aware of its 
corporate life waxes glad when it sees the 
parson going up and down the steps of 
many houses of an afternoon. It knows 
that friendship is going In and out of the 
doors. Perhaps there is no one to receive 
him, and only a card will later tell the 
family that they are graciously remem- 
bered. Perhaps some member of the house 
will welcome the visitor, but the conversa- 
tion may be of only common things— 
a new picture, a new railway station, a 
country road. But friendship will have 



NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 149 

been in that house; and In the evening 
word will be passed about that the parson 
called. He cares, every one thinks to him- 
self; we like him; he is our friend in being 
our pastor. Nor is the benefit ended with 
that pleasant and cordial feeling. Dark- 
ness may come down into that home. 
Anxiety, grievous illness, death may come. 
The family will want more than friendship, 
and that something more they will want in 
a friend. And they have a friend. He 
knows where they live. He comes to see 
them. He cares very much. Now they 
know instinctively that he will care more 
than ever. Before they have a chance to 
tell him, he is at the door. He is asking if 
he may come in. Perhaps they have not 
been in church for years. Perhaps they 
have outwardly given his work no support. 
He seems not to remember it. He is theirs, 
and they are his. All he says, all he does, 
is radiant with that assurance. He is the 
friend of the community — of every member 
of it for whom directly or indirectly he may 
claim responsibility. Never allow any flip- 
pant person to tell you that parish calls 
are a nuisance, that they are superfluous. 



150 THE MINISTRY 

They are often the threshold over which 
Christ steps to give strength and courage 
to His afflicted brothers. 

The community is not content to allow 
the ministry to be absorbed within paro- 
chial limits. The public schools, the hospi- 
tals, the library, the local government, all 
claim his interest. Whether or not he is 
officially associated with these institutions, 
his interest and influence are sought. His 
knowledge, his point of view, his intimacy 
with many people affected make his judg- 
ment so valuable that the wise leader 
counts it essential. By no accident, but 
by real service, the man who has exercised 
his ministry in a community for twenty 
years or so is almost invariably the leading 
citizen. Other men, good and true, stand 
about him, but the community does not 
see how he could be spared. Him, or some- 
body like him, the community must have 
in the ranks of the Christian ministry. 



NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 151 
II 

IN THE NATION 

During the war with Germany the min- 
istry had a chance to see what the national 
government thought of its usefulness. No 
effort to move pubHc opinion failed to in- 
clude an appeal to the ministry to use its 
unique influence. When the Red Cross 
needed strong hands to help, when the 
Liberty Loan needed trustful investors, 
when the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion needed funds for its benevolent work, 
when the homes whence soldiers were 
drafted needed encouragement and consola- 
tion, the ministry was begged to help. The 
Nation asked it. 

Partly the reason why the ministry was 
effective in these appeals which, bidden by 
the government, it gladly made, is that the 
ministry was recognized to be an indepen- 
dent force, following scrupulously its con- 
science. In America there is a free Church 
in a free State. The Church is in no way 
subsidized. Though an institution within 
the State, its allegiance is ultimately to 



152 THE MINISTRY 

God, and to God only. The State is there- 
fore not calling upon a vassal to repeat its 
commands; it is seeking the endorsement 
of an institution which while devoutly loyal 
to the Nation is, as a prophet, telling the 
Nation what is for its best and truest life. 
In easy times the Nation may not think 
overmuch of the Church's judgments; but 
when the great crisis comes, when the peo- 
ple must make sacrifice with righteousness, 
the Nation must have the confirmation of 
its decrees. They must be certified that 
they are after the will of God as those who 
deliberately try to know His will can con- 
fidently affirm. 

What is plain to all in time of crisis, is 
clear to the wise at all times. The Nation 
is always in peril if it lose its integrity, its 
honor. When politicians make statecraft 
a byword and an hissing, when youth play 
fast and loose with moral sanctions, when 
narrow groups insist on rule or ruin, then 
the Nation cries out to the Church to save 
it. The Nation knows what happened to 
Assyria, to Greece, to Rome, to Spain. If 
the ministry be a feeble folk, the Nation 
would do everything to make the ministry 



NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 153 

stronger. It wants men like Francis, and 
Wesley, and Brooks. It wants them in 
great buildings before vast congregations. 
It wants their words to be with power. It 
would have them wake the sleeping, arouse 
the indifferent, convict the selfish and the 
wicked, reform wild youth, frighten the 
complacent, reinforce the brave, the honor- 
able. 

While we think of great names in the 
past we know that the bulk of the work 
has always been done by — 

The unknown good . . . that did their deed 
And scorned to blot it with a name. 

Great names will adorn the ministry of the 
future as they have glorified the ministry of 
the past. But a ministry exalted in ob- 
scure comers of the Nation, doing faithfully 
its unknown, but difficult and necessary 
work, will be the real power which as leaven 
will leaven the whole people, and which as 
salt will purify the whole Nation. 

If you love your country, you will readily 
imagine how necessary is the Christian min- 
istry not only to its better life, but to its 



154 THE MINISTRY 

survival. A nation can endure only so long 
as it knows its responsibility to God. And 
that body of men which keeps the Nation 
thus mindful is the profession which the 
Nation in its sanest moments must know 
to be most necessary of all. 

Ill 

IN WORLD RELATIONSHIPS 

The people in our day are not more anx- 
ious about the Nation than they are about 
the civilization of the whole world. Hav- 
ing shared the sacrifice and the sorrow of a 
world war, we are convinced that if civiliza- 
tion apart from America proves unequal to 
the strain now being put upon it, our own 
dear country must be swallowed up in the 
universal crash. 

Any one who diligently examines history 
will know how inevitable it is that the 
Church and its ministry must go on. When 
Rome fell in 410, what had seemed eternal 
met destruction, but the great man of his 
age, stunned by the failure of the City 
of Man wrote an immortal book on the 
City of God. Again and again the wise 



NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 155 

of the earth have prophesied the end of the 
Church, but it has always come out of the 
blackness to proclaim the Light of the 
World. Its Founder foretold that it could 
not be destroyed, and every imaginable 
emergency has tested His pledge. By the 
most assuring evidence we may trust God 
to use the Church always to revive the dy- 
ing world. 

The ministry accordingly has more than a 
local, more than a national necessity. Men 
of high personal probity have been knaves 
in the Nation; men scrupulous in national 
honor have been base in dealings with for- 
eign nations. Selfishness, trickery, mur- 
der, stain international relationships up to 
our own age. In so far as the ministry of 
the Church is true to its Master, the most 
stinging rebuke must be given to such per- 
fidy. As we are all children of God, what- 
ever the variety of our nationality, we are 
necessarily brethren, with the divine com- 
mand upon us, ^^Love one another.'' The 
selfish and provincial statesman is just to 
his countrymen, a thief and a murderer to 
the inconvenient foreigner. It is the Church 
alone which, as an institution, brings such 



156 THE MINISTRY 

a degenerate to his senses. The most hope- 
less moment in the history of Germany was 
when the clergy gave their sanction to the 
invasion of Belgium, the destruction of 
innocent French non-combatants, and the 
sinking of ships going upon their unwarlike 
and legitimate errands. The most encour- 
aging moment for any nation is when the 
clergy of that particular country rise up as 
one man (not by common agreement but 
spontaneously, each directed by the voice 
of God) to compel the government to deal 
justly with all men however distant in 
space and tradition. 

The inevitable interest which an earnest 
ministry must have in foreign missions is 
a safeguard to an honorable international 
respect. Almost every minister has a dear 
friend who is in the native ministry of 
Japan; another who, though an Anglo- 
Saxon, is giving his whole life to a great 
district in China. Should relationships be- 
tween America on the one hand and China 
or Japan on the other become strained, it is 
unthinkable that Christian men bound to- 
gether by the intimate ties of friendship 
should not have vast powers of reconcilia- 



NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 157 

tion, just in so far as the missionary work 
has been effective. We have reason to be- 
lieve that among the very best, if not the 
very best men of both China and Japan are 
Christians, taught by missionaries, educated 
in our Christian colleges. These men are 
leaders and more and more will be leaders. 
They will see America through those Amer- 
icans who cared enough to become exiles 
from beloved homes in order to tell them of 
Christ, in order to live and die for them 
in Christ's Name. And a great company of 
our best countrymen will see China and 
Japan through these Japanese and Chinese 
Christians. The world, even though it may 
not see the chief boon which Christianity 
has bestowed, will come to see that Chris- 
tianity already tends to save men from in- 
ternational fraud and hate, and may be 
counted on at last to make secure interna- 
tional justice. In any case, however iri- 
descent this dream seem to the sceptic, 
there is no other institution but the Church 
of Christ which can pretend to hope to 
accomplish so arduous a task. 

The world of responsible statesmen so 
far as they can be imagined as coming to- 



158 THE MINISTRY 

gether to work for the benefit of the whole 
civilization of the earth must, if they think 
their task through, long to see the Christian 
Church attain some form of unity which 
shall leave the individual free to follow his 
conscience and yet unite the Christian men 
of all the nations into one willing brother- 
hood, intent upon seeing in one another the 
face of the loving Christ. If such unity 
might come to the Church, if such deep- 
seated trust and understanding could be 
given to those who now work in separate 
camps, the force of the Church as a benef- 
icent agency in the world would be mani- 
fold what it is to-day. This force would 
not come as a master (as in the Mediaeval 
Church), but as a loving servant (as in the 
Primitive Church, when Christ knelt to 
wash His disciples' feet, and when Peter 
and John said: ** Silver and gold have I 
none, but such as I have give I thee. . . . 
Rise up and walk'*). 

The Church has far to go. Its history is 
only beginning. It has had amazing vic- 
tories and heart-rending defeats. It has 
had false, greedy unities and hateful separ- 
ations, but it is potentially the salvation of 



NECESSITY OF THE MINISTRY 159 

the world. More and more, if the best men 
in the world will give their genius, their in- 
tegrity, and their devotion to the ministry, 
the Church will bring the nations into a 
joyful unity where each shall strive for the 
good of all, and all shall pour the blessings 
of their strength into the feeble and the 
discouraged. 

There are some men with large enough 
vision to long for the salvation of the world. 
That salvation, accomplished once for all in 
the sacrificial love of Christ, shall be realized 
through the patient and loving ejfforts of a 
consistent Christian ministry. Lift up your 
heads, humble ministers of Christ ; you have 
the supreme task among the tasks revealed 
to men! 



VIII 

THE COMPENSATIONS OF THE 
MINISTRY 

I 

ENOUGH TO LIVE UPON 

A MAN entering any vocation has a right to 
ask whether he can support himself and his 
family on the salary which he is likely to 
receive. If a man feels himself really called 
to a vocation, the enthusiasm of his assur- 
ance that God has designed him for that 
niche in life, will carry him far beyond any 
such consideration as the means of liveli- 
hood. But he must ask the question at 
last, and he has a right to ask it. 

If you have the ambition to be rich, you 
can entertain no thought that the ministry 
will by any chance lead to wealth. Even 
the largest salaries paid to the most con- 
spicuous ministers of America must seem 
insignificant to the men of the same effi- 

i6o 



COMPENSATIONS i6i 

ciency in medicine and the law; and to the 
men of the same caliber in business they 
must seem ridiculously meagre as the re- 
ward of a year's hard work. At the be- 
ginning, therefore, one must see that the 
recompense of the ministry is not in money. 

The question then comes, **Will the or- 
dinary man be able to live upon what is 
given to average ability ? " Often the extra- 
ordinary man is in a place which can sup- 
port only a man of average ability; but 
most men rightly put themselves modestly 
among the average class. A good many 
things need to be said about this. In gen- 
eral, I am inclined to believe that the men 
who have difficulty in supporting their 
families are not more in the ministry than 
in the law, medicine, teaching, or business. 

One reason why we observe failure of 
support in the ministry is because the men 
who give up the ministry to find what they 
think more nearly adequate support else- 
where are thereby marked. A man is sup- 
posed to stay in the ministry after he enters 
it. I know a great many men outside the 
ministry who try one task after another, 
and no one thinks much about it. Because 



i62 THE MINISTRY 

they move from the law or medicine into 
business, no one cries out that the law or 
medicine does not support lawyers or phy- 
sicians. It does not support one particu- 
lar lawyer, or one particular physician ; that 
is all. So you must not think that because 
a minister you know has gone into business 
the ministry therefore does not support the 
clergy. Most men get on very comfort- 
ably; and their homes are apt to be in bet- 
ter taste, essentially more comfortable, than 
nine-tenths of the homes in their commu- 
nity, village, or city. The homes of people 
who have no more than the parson and his 
wife are sometimes confused and soiled. 
The homes of those who have more are 
sometimes vulgar in their display, either re- 
vealing the so-called taste of an interior 
decorator or no taste at all. Money can- 
not of itself make either beauty or comfort. 
That something which the parson and his 
wife are apt to have, can, with a little 
money, make both comfort and beauty. 

The salaries of the clergy are much better 
than they have been, and they are con- 
stantly increasing, under the leadership of 
certain wise counsellors blessed with imag- 



COMPENSATIONS 163 

ination, who know that the minds of the 
clergy must be emancipated from fretting 
cares if they are to do their best work. So 
pension funds have been established in 
several Communions, and a man's old age 
is provided for if he lives; his widow and 
children are provided for if he dies. The 
salaries at the beginning of a man's minis- 
try are somewhat larger than his brother 
could expect from fees in his early practice 
of law or medicine. And enough men are 
aroused to the need of supplying adequate 
salaries to make it certain that no one really 
need hesitate to enter the ministry for eco- 
nomic reasons. We must frankly admit that 
the ministry, like teaching, is scandalously 
underpaid, when we consider the benefit 
which these vocations bestow upon the 
community. A man must find in the min- 
istry such enticing compensation in its work 
that he is content to overlook its limited 
compensation in money. At the same time 
he may believe that the salaries of the 
clergy will be more nearly adequate within 
the next few years. 

Meantime, men who have found it neces- 
sary to economize at every turn of their 



i64 THE MINISTRY 

ministry, have found a certain satisfaction 
in its suggestion of sacrifice. When a par- 
son in a pleasant New England village or in 
the outskirts of a Western city thinks of 
his classmate who has gone to China or 
India, a willing exile from his dearest friends 
and relatives, he is glad that he has some 
share in the heroic aspect of the ministry. 
He would be ashamed to have his ministry 
at home too comfortable. 

Moreover, the devout and serious think- 
ing characteristic of the parsonage or rec- 
tory, combined with its plain living, has 
made the best background for the training 
of children. Any one who has not hitherto 
made the investigation, will be astonished 
to discover how large is the proportion of 
distinguished leaders in public life whose 
fathers were ministers. The refinement and 
cultivation, unhampered by idleness, undue 
pleasure, and luxury, have made great men. 
One begins to revise one's notions of the 
qualities and quantities which make the 
most desirable environment for a growing 
family. As the ministry becomes more 
prosperous in a worldly way — as it will 
become — we must beware of the risk men- 



COMPENSATIONS 165 

tioned by the Psalmist, ''He gave them 
their desire: and sent leanness withal into 
their soul/' In the past, meagre surround- 
ings have allowed a first place to joyful 
sacrifice and a devout spirit of unselfish 
service. Whatever hardship there was, has 
been transcended by the discovery and the 
winning of the best values in life. 

II 

THE JOY OF ADVENTURE 

When a war comes, youth are aroused by 
the beckoning of a gallant and unselfish 
adventure. But in days of peace the field 
of adventure is limited. One of the fields 
of adventure always open for the daringly 
unselfish is the Christian ministry. The 
ministry oflfers to-day almost as great a risk 
as it offered in the seventeenth century, when 
the brave Jesuit priests pushed through the 
American forests to preach Christ to the 
hunters and the fishermen. Arctic cold and 
tropic heat cannot frighten men who hear 
the cry to help to the uttermost the men of 
Alaska, the men of Central Africa, and of 
other difficult regions of the earth. 



i66 THE MINISTRY 

The Christian missionary goes to his field 
so blithely that most of us little suspect 
his sense of sacrifice. A friend who had 
planned all through his college and semi- 
nary days to go to China was on fire with 
enthusiasm to be away, and at work in his 
chosen field. He went off with banners fly- 
ing. But he told me that when he said 
good-bye at Vancouver to his mother and 
his sister, knowing that not for seven years 
(if at all) would he see them again, his 
heart was near breaking. He transcended 
his homesickness by the glory of his mis- 
sion, but his heroism was at least as real as 
that of any soldier going off to the wars. 

Less than twenty years ago a clergy- 
man in a Texan city, with reputation as a 
preacher, with a prosperous and affection- 
ate parish behind him, deliberately left the 
prospect of a pleasant career and offered 
himself for work in Alaska. I chanced to 
spend several weeks in the s^me inn with 
him, in the Canadian Rockies, as he made 
his way northward. He had never climbed 
a high mountain, but he was thinking of the 
heights of Alaska, which he meant to scale. 
He had bought an aneroid, and he had pos- 



COMPENSATIONS 167 

sessed himself of other equipment useful for 
a mountain cHmber. After he had been at 
Lake Louise a few days, he formed a party 
and, with two Swiss guides, he dimbed the 
most hazardous peak in the vicinity, Mount 
Victoria. It was a rash feat for one so 
little tried in the art of climbing, but he 
achieved his ambition for that stage of his 
journey, and soon he was on his way to the 
coast to go on board the Alaskan steamer. 

The story of Hudson Stuck is known by 
every one who is interested in mountain 
climbing and in Christian missions. He 
achieved the summit of Mount Denali, 
and he made even more venturesome jour- 
neys through summer floods and winter 
snows to minister to scattered people. He 
brought them joy and diversion, he brought 
them also goodness and peace. The out- 
side world admired him; the people of 
Alaska loved him. It was the spirit of 
adventure which lured him on to be a 
notable missionary, for ever to be remem- 
bered in the annals of the Christian Church. 

When we think of the thousands of men 
who voluntarily exile themselves to build 
up the frontiers of the Kingdom of God, we 



i68 THE MINISTRY 

have a new respect for the ministry. It is 
not the soft thing many a facile talker 
thinks it. It is beset with hardness and peril, 
and it is crowded with the love which allows 
nothing to come between it and Christ. 

Incidentally, a minister who watches his 
brother go off to the edges of our own 
country and to the foreign lands beyond 
the seas is grateful that there are difficul- 
ties at home. He is glad if he must spend 
many years in the dense noise of the city 
or the loneliness of the country, with a 
salary which requires circumspection in its 
spending, that he may be able to count 
himself at least of the same devoted band 
as his fellows who have gone into the utter- 
most parts of the earth. Youth, at its 
best, does not want money or ease ; it craves 
adventure. And the ministry offers it in 
glittering abundance. 

Ill 

THE LOVE OF HUMANITY 

In America, we have a rough division of 
life into (i) country, (2) town, and (3) city. 
Speaking arbitrarily, we may define rural 



COMPENSATIONS 169 

life as life on isolated farms, plantations, 
and ranches; or in communities of less than 
two thousand people; town life, as life in 
communities of from two thousand to 
twenty thousand people ; and all the charac- 
teristics of city life we may ascribe to com- 
munities of more than twenty thousand 
people. Let us ask what are the compensa- 
tions of the ministry in these various con- 
ditions in our own land; and then let us 
turn to the compensations which may be 
found in a ministry in a foreign field. 



IN THE COUNTRY 

We need to know again the opportunity 
of a ministry in the country. We often say 
that in England the opportunity is proved 
by the fame won by Richard Hooker while 
he was Rector of Bishopthorpe, by George 
Herbert while he was Rector of Bemerton, 
by John Keble while he was Rector of Hurs- 
ley, by Richard Church while he was Rec- 
tor of Whatley, and by Charles Kingsley 
while he was Rector of Eversley. They 
wrote village sermons which are classics; 



I70 THE MINISTRY 

and they also used their leisure to write 
books, which make their names illustrious 
wherever English is spoken. The ministry 
of great city churches and cathedrals, of 
dioceses and provinces, is largely forgotten, 
while gratitude still goes out to these rural 
parsons. In our own day England sets us 
an example of courage in the country min- 
istry. 

To-day In America the man whose life is 
confined to a rural ministry through many 
years is apt to feel aggrieved. He thinks 
himself neglected, unappreciated, and then, 
if he persists in this mood, he rusts out, and 
he mourns that he has failed. There are, 
of course, notable exceptions to-day; and 
in the past we find most distinguished min- 
istries in the country. Let me give one 
example. The Reverend Jared Eliot (the 
son of John Eliot, ''the Apostle to the In- 
dians'') was graduated from Yale in 1706. 
For three years he taught school. In 1709 
he settled down to a pastorate of fifty-four 
years in the village of Killingworth, Con- 
necticut — that is, he stayed happily and 
contentedly in this rural parish till he died. 
He introduced the mulberry-tree into Con- 



COMPENSATIONS 171 

necticut and wrote an essay on the silk- 
worm. He wrote the first American book 
on Agriculture, and was elected a member 
of the Royal Society of London. All these 
books and enthusiasms were his avocations, 
his pastimes. His real work was his village 
ministry which brought him both satisfac- 
tion and fame, for his printed sermons are 
still to be found in Connecticut libraries. 
He was not only the most loved man in 
Killingworth, but he was, by his sympa- 
thies and industry, a man valued by all the 
country around him and by learned men 
across the sea. America was not always 
afraid of the rural ministry. It knew how 
to use its wisdom and its leisure to high and 
varied purposes within the largeness of the 
Kingdom of God. 

There are to-day men who are joyfully 
giving their whole lives to the rural min- 
istry. One man, of whom I think, was 
forced by frail health to work in the coun- 
try. With the ability which could have 
directed a metropolitan parish, he is serving 
a small congregation on Sunday, and is 
serving the whole neighborhood through the 
week. He has brought his imagination and 



172 THE MINISTRY 

genius into the drabness of the village and 
its surrounding farms. Unheard-of things 
are being done. Like the country doctor, 
in Balzac's story, he is reconstructing the 
community. Beginning with material im- 
provement, he has passed to the mental 
sphere, and now to the heights of the spirit. 
He is reading and thinking and writing ; but 
most of all, by God's help, he is creating in 
flesh and blood a miniature kingdom of 
heaven. 

For a short time I had some experience 
of the rural ministry. I shall never forget 
the joy of mounting my horse, and going 
over the country roads to see my scattered 
parishioners. One old saint I remember in 
particular. He had all his life been a gen- 
tleman, and he had always been a farmer. 
He could not often come to church, and I 
therefore would ask him before going from 
his house, if he would like to have prayers. 
"Yes, very much," he would answer; *'but 
excuse me for a moment." Whereupon he 
would disappear, to return wearing a black 
frock coat, thus showing his respect for the 
act of worship. I went away thinking of 
many things, knowing myself to have been 



COMPENSATIONS 173 

in a most reverent sense in God's presence. 
A little farther on I came to a man who 
Hved alone with his daughter. He gave me 
a picture of St. Alban's Abbey, and he told 
me stories of his boyhood in the old town. 
I knew that the picture was one of his most 
prized treasures, but I knew also that I 
must take it. The small photograph is 
near me as I write, and it tells me of a lov- 
ing confidence which belongs to the open 
sky and the friendship of a good and simple 
man. On those rides down the open road, 
I talked of trees and crops and grim acci- 
dents; but I was learning deep lessons from 
people who lived day by day in the air and 
the sunshine and the fragrant rain. 

There ought to be men who in the theo- 
logical school will see the vision of the com- 
pensations of the rural ministry and delib- 
erately fit themselves for it. While in the 
seminary they might wisely take courses in 
a neighboring agricultural college, thereby 
fitting themselves for the specific conditions 
of country life. Men of wealth who are 
drawn to country life, and yet want to 
serve in some high way, might give them- 
selves to such a ministry among the farms. 



174 THE MINISTRY 

Outwardly they would be that combination 
of squire and parson which is called in 
England a squarson; inwardly, they would 
be the redeeming leaders of the vast country 
life of America which to-day, as never be- 
fore, awaits leadership. 

In the rural ministry there is possibly 
a great opportunity for the whole Nation. 
One of the wisest men I know said to me 
recently that the leadership of America was 
stale, because it was confined at present to 
the voices in the great cities. He lamented 
that the voices most often heard were sub- 
ject to panic and fear and selfishness; and 
resented any real reflection, any considera- 
tion of change or possible improvement. 
Then he added that we could not hope for 
a really sane leadership till men ceased to 
herd together in cities and betook them- 
selves to the open country, there to find 
freedom and judgment, and in the conscious 
presence of God to think the problems of 
the Nation and the world through to their 
divine solution. Is that not an alluring pic- 
ture ? Would you not like to go forth into 
the open spaces, with enough men to serve, 
to love, and to be loved by, and yet with 



COMPENSATIONS 175 

leisure enough to think, and then, when the 
fire burns, to speak out, and to be perhaps 
safe leaders of men everywhere? 

Several years ago I chanced to be spend- 
ing the summer in a mountain village. 
There was one church serving the whole 
community, which numbered only a few 
hundred people. The pastor had grown 
old in his modest charge. The people who 
augmented his flock in the summer seemed 
quite as appreciative of his ministrations 
as the people who lived there through the 
year. Among these summer visitors was a 
university professor who each year spent a 
month in an inn hard by. He was used to 
the voices of the most distinguished reli- 
gious leaders in this country and England ; 
yet he said that if he needed spiritual help 
in any considerable crisis he would turn to 
the pastor of this village church. Some 
way he felt that this man who knew a few 
souls thoroughly and who was not jostled 
by the thronging and noisy duties of the 
city had come to more intimate knowledge 
of God and man than the preachers he was 
accustomed to hear in the university centre. 

The compensations of the rural ministry 



176 THE MINISTRY 

are radiant. Who will earn them in the 
years just before us ? 

B 

IN THE TOWN 

Then there is the ministry in the town. 
There is a unique friendliness in a place 
which is large enough to have varieties of 
people and interests, yet not too large to 
allow every one to know every one else. Not 
only the parson's parishioners, but all the 
others are the parson's friends. To the 
being who loves his fellow man it is cheer- 
ing to meet at every turn people whom he 
knows and cares for. The town becomes a 
larger family. The fussy person may com- 
plain that his neighbors are overinterested 
in his affairs, that his plans are discussed 
before he has fixed upon them, that his 
idiosyncrasies are the topic of many a tea- 
table, that the color of his house and the 
shape of his hat are matters of vivid interest 
to his aunt's most intimate friends. Most 
qualities have their defects, and it would 
not be strange if the friendliness of a town 
had certain inconveniences. But these are 



COM PENSATIONS 1 77 

trifling when you contemplate the human- 
ness of the interest. The parson is not 
living among mere houses and shops and 
streets, but among people. And the people 
are neither wax nor stone, but flesh and 
blood, who recognize in you a fellow mortal, 
in whom they claim kinship because you 
and they live in the same town. And the 
parson has more of the friendship than any 
one else, because he is the parson. 

If the parson is ill, the children come on 
tiptoe to his door and bring him wild flowers 
which they have gathered; a gruff old man 
brings a witty book; and the whole town 
does not allow itself to go to sleep till it 
knows each day how the parson is gaining. 
If blinding sorrow comes, and one thinks 
that love has died out of the universe, friend 
after friend comes with token or with word 
to assure the broken heart that God's love 
is yet the supreme fact in the world. A 
hush descends upon the very streets when 
deep sorrow comes to a dear neighbor in 
the town. 

This pervasive friendship gives to the 
parson a peculiar influence. Because his 
days are not crowded with routine he may 



178 THE MINISTRY 

seize various opportunities for leadership 
which his neighbors plead with him to as- 
sume. He may guide the reading, through 
suggesting fine books for the public library; 
he may organize a society for the architec- 
tural improvement of the business streets; 
he may deftly suggest how a shrub here, a 
tree there, a bit of open grass, a bed of gay 
flowers, may transform into beauty the 
monotonous streets, where the houses are; 
he may found a hospital; he may quicken 
a right public opinion for sound local gov- 
ernment, and he may persuade the busiest 
and most honorable of his parishioners to 
offer themselves for public office. 

Every one who knows such a parson is 
apt to point with pride to his commanding 
position, showing that he is the most use- 
ful man and the most loved man within 
many miles. I remember a parson in a 
town of about ten thousand people who 
quietly reported that he had seen a candi- 
date for the State governorship drunken, 
that he had heard him use grossly profane 
language; he said, therefore, that such a 
man ought not to be governor of his State. 
The candidate wrote an overbearing letter 



COM PENSATIONS 1 79 

commanding denial. The parson instantly 
replied that, so far from recanting, he would 
gladly give, if he wished, full information, 
the hotel, the day, and the hour. The 
story spread over the State, which was 
saved thereby the calamity of having such 
a governor. His defeat was thought im- 
possible, because he represented the domi- 
nant party, and his opponent was practi- 
cally unknown. 

I had a ministry of eleven happy years in 
a town of about seven thousand people. I 
have not seen it for fourteen years, but I 
think I could go to every door-step where 
my dear parishioners and friends lived, and 
if they are still living where they then lived, 
I could see again all the joys and sorrows 
which I lived out with them, and I could 
begin where I left them one November day 
many years ago, and speak of those they 
loved, of the teacher who taught their chil- 
dren, of the lame man who made most ex- 
cellent jests and smiled through the pain, 
of the professor of theology who scolded 
first and then gave a genial affection to his 
younger friends, of the old lady with a little 
dog who lived in a vine-covered cottage and 



i8o THE MINISTRY 

spoke with charm of noble men and women 
whom she had known more or less inti- 
mately through her four-score years, of a 
distinguished bishop who for forty years 
had been the father of the town. 

And how the children of that town stand 
forth in my memory! There was the boy 
who swore at the curate, whom I afterward 
reproached with his backsliding, who went 
away without a word, but who (I found the 
next morning) had late at night put a tear- 
stained unsigned paper under my door, say- 
ing, '*ril never do it again." [It was the 
best anonymous letter I ever received.] 
There was the very young child who shook 
his fist out of the window, upon being told 
that God made it rain, the form of prayer 
used being, "I want you to stop." [Be- 
ginning there, I was requested to give an 
infallible rule for making children reverent 
as well as prayerful.] I remember the small 
girl who was so generous that when her 
father forbade her putting more money in 
her missionary mite-box, sought the house 
of her aunt, and put all of her living into 
her cousin's box. ''Papa," she said with a 
sigh, ''didn't tell me I couldn't put money 



COMPENSATIONS i8i 

into Robbie's box.'' [How those children 
did give to missions !] I remember the boy 
who startled his mother's caller by making 
deafening crashes over the drawing-room. 
When his mother, having said good-bye to 
the somewhat stately new acquaintance, 
went to the door of the up-stairs room, she 
found the boy trying to put his rocking- 
horse on two chairs, each time failing with 
the loud drop of the beast. When asked 
what he was doing, he replied, *'0h, I was 
trying to put the ass into the pinnace." 
[He had been reading The Swiss Family 
Robinson : very intelligent children I had in 
my parish.] 

To think of such experiences is to know 
that there was something eternal in the rela- 
tionship of pastor and flock in that blessed 
town. I never can forget those people; I 
hope that at least some of them will always 
remember me. One has no longing to be 
gone from such a ministry; one would cheer- 
fully stay all one's days within it. For it is 
friendly; it is home. 



i82 THE MINISTRY 



IN THE CITY 

The response which the ministry receives 
in the city is not essentially different from 
the response which it receives in the village 
and the town. Human needs are the same 
everywhere. The man who gives his life 
for others will always receive the love which 
loving service commands. Its expression 
may vary: the reality will be the same. 

The city parish is apt to differ from the 
country parish by having in it people more 
or less of the same kind. If the parish is 
on the East Side of New York, it will be 
made up almost exclusively of very poor 
people. If it is in a section where prosper- 
ous people live, the pews will be filled with 
people who seem (at least to the stranger) 
to be very prosperous. Of course every 
parish has its rich and its poor, but the pro- 
portion varies. The most satisfactory par- 
ish is the parish which lovingly ministers to 
all sorts of people. 

To the outsider the city seems hard and 
cold. He pities the country parson who 



COMPENSATIONS 183 

moves from a small town to a great city. 
He suspects that the parson will be shiver- 
ing in his loneliness, hemmed in by a wait- 
ing conventionality. I shall never forget 
how, in one such transition, a very old and 
very noble city parishioner wrote to her 
new rector whom she had barely seen, ''I 
have known and loved three rectors of this 
parish; and I am ready to give my love to 
their successor.'' And that letter was not 
isolated. It was a sample from a general 
response which but deepened through the 
years. 

Because people seem to have every earth- 
ly wish satisfied, because they have houses 
and lands, pictures and jewels, and perhaps 
great place through inheritance or genius, 
therefore the stupid believe that they desire 
nothing from any one. It is the tragedy of 
such lives that their friends are often few 
and these few feel that there is nothing 
which they can bestow upon such super- 
abundance. So at Christmas there is for 
them slight symbol of the love in which 
they are held. We are strangely slow in 
learning the human heart. The demands 
of human life are elemental. The power to 



i84 THE MINISTRY 

buy material things does not include the 
power to be possessed of the intangible real- 
ities such as joy and respect and honor and 
genuine love. If these priceless possessions 
are won they are won exactly as the poorest 
win them. And so, passing by all other 
means of happiness, we know that the rich 
man quite as the poor man is glad to have 
a true friend in his pastor to whom he can 
turn in days of darkness or of doubt, and 
be assured that the call from the depths 
will be answered. You cannot be Doctor 
Lavender all at once, but it is astonishing 
what trust people who have much either 
in character or in possessions will give to 
Doctor Lavenders in the making. The 
late Franklin Spencer Spalding was known 
chiefly as the courageous bishop of Utah, 
but he had first a remarkable pastorate in 
a city. The small son of one of his well-to- 
do parishioners one day asked his mother 
what little boys did who had no fathers and 
mothers. Then he answered the question 
himself: '*I know — they have Christ — and 
Mr. Spalding." What a vision this child 
gives us into the value which one family 
put upon a minister's friendship ! 



COMPENSATIONS 185 

The inexperienced are apt to doubt also 
the response of the other extreme in the Hfe 
of the city — the parish made up of the very 
poor. One wonders if the bitterness of 
poverty or the interest in loaves and fishes 
may not build a wall which keeps out 
friendship. You have but to go into a 
parish in the densely crowded portion of a 
great city to discover what the parson is 
to his poor parishioners. He goes to see 
them; but they more frequently come to 
see him. The parish house is the radiant 
part of their home. Th^ friends who mean 
most in their lives they meet there. And 
at the head is the good pastor; their eyes 
follow him as he moves to and fro, and the 
unmistakable glance of ownership and love 
tells the stranger what he is to them. One 
knows instantly how great a vocation that 
man has chosen. To mean so much as 
that to people who need friendship at its 
best is beyond all outward comfort and suc- 
cess. 

Let me quote again Edward Lincoln At- 
kinson, who gave most of his short minis- 
try to the poor in the South End of Boston. 
He presents to us vivid testimony concern- 



i86 THE MINISTRY 

ing the response of what is commonly called 
a mission parish: 

This parish grows more and more to be part 
of me, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. 
I am getting to be loved in spite of my short- 
comings. The personal element has grown. I 
mean I have the shepherd's feeling as regards 
the individuals of my flock. 

''The deaths ye have died I have watched 

beside, 
And the lives ye have lived are mine. ' * 

They are especially my people. It is really 
blessed comfort, after you have been loving the 
world in the abstract so long, to be able to love 
and to be loved concretely — to think that peo- 
ple come to you for this and that because you 
are you, and you are therefore something par- 
ticular to them. The real joy of the ministry 
has come to be mine. 

If you suspect that a parish of very poor 
people would not do much for their minis- 
ter, you have only to read the following 
paragraph from the same man's life: 

One day one of his Brotherhood men met him 
leaving a market with a leg of Iamb which he 



COMPENSATIONS 187 

was taking to a poor family. The man, know- 
ing in some way how Atkinson was being forced 
to take his luncheons in very cheap places, up- 
braided him for giving everything away. '* Sup- 
pose you break down — you will have nothing to 
keep you," the man cried. Atkinson looked 
him straight in the eye: *' Robert,*' he said, 
**if I needed anything, and went to your door 
for it, would you refuse me ? " '* Of course not," 
was the quick answer. *'Well," said Atkinson, 
** every one in my parish would do for me in the 
same way." 

The calls upon a city clergyman are be- 
wildering. He must keep strict guard over 
the hours for study and meditation, else his 
time will be absorbed in an endless succes- 
sion of meetings, public dinners, and civic 
speeches. What may be his destruction is 
also his opportunity. The city to-day, so 
far from disregarding the ministry, does 
practically nothing without seeking its co- 
operation. That co-operation, wisely given, 
may be a tremendous help both to the min- 
istry and to the city. It must not be a 
co-operation which seeks applause, which 
stands to shout when the multitude, or the 
dominant group within the city, cries out 



i88 THE MINISTRY 

its shibboleths. The ministry ought to be 
counted upon for the more thoughtful word, 
for the less popular utterance, perhaps for 
the warning and the rebuke. He is not the 
most useful minister who can always be 
counted upon to blow the coals of public 
passion into a flame. His office is inde- 
pendent of the immediate issue. He ought 
to see the principles within the issue which 
will meet the demands of an ending ap- 
proved by God. 

Gladiatorial combats continued in Rome 
until a monk named Telemachus jumped 
into the arena and the horror of his sacrifice 
ended the disgrace. I have wondered if in 
our own day and land the Bolshevistic 
method of intercepting the process of the 
law, called lynching, might not abruptly 
end if a neighboring parson should invite 
himself to such a scene and utter his indig- 
nant protest to the mob, and so wound 
their fury as to be himself lynched. I can 
imagine that his heroism would achieve a 
permanent victory for regular and orderly 
government. This is a type of leadership 
which the city needs. 



COMPENSATIONS 189 



IN THE MISSION FIELD 

If you wish to know what is the response 
to the work of a Christian missionary you 
can do nothing better than read St. Paul's 
Epistle to the Philippians. You will dis- 
cover there not only his affection for his 
Philippian parishioners, but also, quite as 
clearly, their affection for him. Your im- 
agination will open, and you will picture to 
yourselves how any one must feel towards 
the man who first told him of Christ and 
His love, and then by his daily deeds showed 
forth the life of his Master. The annals of 
missionary heroes are filled with the revela- 
tion of fidelity and devotion which converts 
have shown to their benefactors. If one 
would have a life not only of heroic adven- 
ture but also of the richest compensation in 
love, one could do no better than equip 
oneself for the mission field, and then take 
ship for a far-away land. 

Sir W. Mackworth Young, late Lieuten- 
ant-Governor of the Punjab, thus bears his 
testimony to the response which a fine 



190 THE MINISTRY 

type of Christian missionary may expect to 
win: 

As a business man speaking to business men, 
I am prepared to say that the work which has 
been done by missionary agency in India ex- 
ceeds in importance all that has been done (and 
much has been done) by the British Govern- 
ment in India since its beginning. Let me take 
the province which I know best. I ask myself 
what has been the most potent influence which 
has been working among the people since 
annexation fifty-four years ago, and to that 
question I feel there is but one answer — Chris- 
tianity, as set forth in the lives and teaching of 
Christian missionaries. The Punjab bears on 
its historical roll the names of many Christian 
statesmen who have honored God by their 
lives and endeared themselves to the people by 
their faithful work; but I venture to say that 
if they could speak to us from the great unseen, 
there is not one of them who would not pro- 
claim that the work done by men like French, 
Clark, Newton, and Forman, who went in and 
out among the people for a whole generation or 
more, and who preached by their lives the 
nobility of self-sacrifice, and the lesson of love 
to God and man, is a higher and nobler work, 
and more far-reaching in its consequences. 



COMPENSATIONS 191 

If you would know the thrill which comes 
to a victorious missionary, imagine Tucker, 
in his church at Uganda, filled with seven 
thousand black people, standing not far 
from the spot where only a generation be- 
fore Hannington had been murdered. It is 
said by those who have been present at one 
of these services that the most convincing 
plea they have ever heard for Christianity 
was the Apostles' Creed as this great throng 
proclaimed it. 

Results are not often so striking. Gen- 
erally the finest work is accomplished by 
deep-laid foundations, and the superstruc- 
ture does not appear for many years. But 
occasionally the response is immediate. 
The Reverend Arthur J. Brown describes 
dramatically such an instance of quick re- 
sponse : 

Two missionaries went to a village in Korea 
in which the Gospel had never been preached. 
It was noised abroad that they had come, and 
practically the whole population gathered. The 
interest was so great that the meeting continued 
until a late hour. Finally, the missionaries 
pleaded weariness after a hard day's journey, 
and were shown into an adjoining room for the 



192 THE MINISTRY 

night. But the people did not go away, and 
the murmuring of their voices kept the mission- 
aries from sleeping. About two o'clock one of 
them went out and said almost impatiently: 
**Why don't you go home and go to sleep? It 
is very late, and we are tired.*' The head man 
of the village aswered: **How can we sleep? 
You have told us that the Supreme Power is not 
an evil spirit trying to injure us, but a loving 
God, who gave His only Begotten Son for our 
salvation, and that if we will turn from our sins 
and trust in Him, we shall have deliverance from 
our fears, guidance in our perplexities, comfort 
in our sorrows, and a life for ever with Him. 
How can we sleep after a message like this?" 
How could they indeed ! And the missionaries, 
forgetting their weariness, sat down by those 
poor people and communed with them until the 
morning dawned. 

When I was a theological student, I re- 
member asking a Japanese classmate if he 
would tell me how he was converted to 
Christianity. He said that he grew up in a 
little Japanese village, but, having in his 
heart an ambition to enter public life, he 
went to Tokyo. There he learned at once 
that he must be taught English. He wan- 
dered one day into a mission school, asking 



COMPENSATIONS 193 

if he could be taught the chief language of 
the West. One day a New Testament in 
Japanese was put into his hands. He 
opened it casually; it caught his attention; 
he read more and more eagerly; without 
pausing to eat or sleep, he read it through; 
then turning back to the beginning he read 
it through again. He was a man of singu- 
lar concentration. He told me that, for the 
time, the outside world was blotted out. 
He saw Jesus only. He went to the teacher 
who had been especially kind to him, plead- 
ing: ''Tell me of this Jesus. He is the 
Master I have sought all my life. This is 
the day for which I have lived." Then he 
poured out to me his gratitude for the man 
who had brought him to Christ; and I won- 
dered if, in the days to come, any man 
would be as grateful to me as my Japanese 
friend was to the far-away missionary who 
had been given the great opportunity of 
teaching and living Christ in a foreign 
land. 

In speaking of the mission field abroad, 
one cannot forget the mission field at home. 
As the edges of our country fill up, the terri- 
tory which may be called in any sense mis- 



194 THE MINISTRY 

sionary, decreases. The picturesque con- 
ditions of forty or fifty years ago tend to 
change into the normal Hfe of the whole 
Nation. But there are still counties in im- 
mense States which are only sparsely set- 
tled. There is still the tendency, when a 
family or an individual migrates from a 
Pennsylvania town to a mining-camp in the 
Rocky Mountains, to leave behind the con- 
ventions and sanctions of religion. In the 
struggle for life, or in the fascination of 
making money fast, the Church is nearly 
forgotten, and, for the time being, ignored. 
So there must be missionaries at home. 
The young minister is sent to some Western 
State, and is given a jurisdiction which 
covers, let us say, four hundred square miles. 
In the settlements of this region he holds 
services in rotation. And, as he can, he 
goes to scattered ranches, gathering for a 
service the family and the men who work 
on the ranch if they are willing, baptizing 
children if it is desired, showing friendship 
always. Thereby, when sorrow comes to 
that ranch, every one wants the missionary, 
if he can possibly come, that his word may 
bring hope and peace to the sorrowing, and 



COMPENSATIONS 195 

that he may commit to God's keeping the 
soul which has passed. 

This missionary experience is outwardly 
hard. It means separation from kinsfolk 
and friends of long standing. It means far 
journeys, and little in the way of statistics 
to astonish the Church at large. But it also 
means the sense that one is bringing Christ 
to men and women who have no other 
chance to hear the Gospel than he and pos- 
sibly some other wandering missionary now 
and then can bring to them. There will 
almost invariably be respect; sometimes 
overwhelming gratitude. Those who have 
longed to hear the old words spoken will 
feel that heaven has touched the earth 
again, and some who have not understood 
will see the Light for the first time. In the 
annals of a missionary on our Western plains 
there is this story: 

I baptized a little girl in a small town on the 
border of the Indian Territory. Her father was 
a cattleman. It would be no extravagance to 
say that the ''cattle upon a thousand hills'* 
were his, if it were not for the fact that there 
were no hills on his mighty ranch. Each cat- 



196 THE MINISTRY 

tie-owner in that country has a different brand 
with which his cattle are marked, and by which 
he identifies them wlien the great '* round-ups" 
occur. The ^'mavericks" — young cattle born 
on the ranch which have not been marked — 
belong to the first man who can get his brand- 
ing-iron on them. 

I could only make that town on a week-day, 
and arrangements had been made for the bap- 
tism in the morning. The child, about six 
years of age, had just started to the public 
school, and she had to remain away from one 
session for the baptism. In our service we sign 
those who are baptized with the sign of the 
cross. When she returned to school, the chil- 
dren pressed her with hard questions, desiring 
to know what that man with the ** nightgown** 
on had done to her, and if she was now any dif- 
ferent from what she was before. 

She tried to tell them that she had been made 
'*a member of Christ, the child of God, and an 
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven,*' but did 
not very well succeed in expressing the situa- 
tion; so they gathered about her with the un- 
conscious cruelty of children, and pushed her 
over against the theological wall, so the speak. ! 
Finally, when she had exhausted every other 
effort, she turned on them, her eyes flashing 
through her tears. ''Well," she said, lapsing 



COMPENSATIONS 197 

into the vernacular, ^*I will tell you. I was a 
little maverick before, and the man put Jesus* 
brand on my forehead, and when He sees me 
running wild on the prairie, He will know that 
I am His little girl." 



IV 

THE LOVE OF GOD 

Sometimes the aged layman will confess 
to his young friend, who is making up his 
mind upon his vocation, '*If I had my life 
to live over, I should enter the Christian 
ministry." That is an eloquent confession. 
It sets the young man thinking. He won- 
ders what he will say when his active work 
is over, in case he elects this profession or 
that form of business. There will be then, 
he reflects, only one Voice whose approba- 
tion he covets, and that is the Voice of the 
Most High. We imagine that, in all humil- 
ity, Pasteur the scientist must have been 
conscious of God's approval; and likewise 
John Bright the statesman, Walter Scott 
the writer, and Dante the poet. All these 
men had a sense of vocation, and could not 
help knowing at the last that they had 



198 THE MINISTRY 

God's authoritative commendation. But it 
seems as if to the Christian minister who 
has lived finely and unselfishly there must 
come a more nearly invariable sense of 
God's approval. The world has been thrust 
into the background. The things which are 
eternal have been chosen for the chief em- 
phasis. In spite of all misgiving, in spite 
of all littleness and narrowness, in spite of 
all failure and sin, there has been, by God's 
mercy, an always increasing desire to serve 
men in the highest and deepest parts of 
human life, to kneel down, as the Master 
knelt, and wash the disciples' feet, to ascend 
the mountain as the Lord went up, and to 
catch, with the other disciples, the glory 
which God reveals to reverent and patient 
spirits. 

A ministry faithfully served among men, 
far or near, in country or in city, rich or 
poor, learned or ignorant, wise or foolish, 
may be counted upon to bring to a man 
that most indestructible gift, the conscious- 
ness of the love of God. 



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